Google Is Serious About Social

http://searchengineland.com/report-google-ceo-page-ties-bonuses-to-social-success-reorganizes-google-mgmt-team-72197

When Larry Page said he wanted to have a social layer applied to Google he wasn't kidding. Apparently he didn't like the direction the company was taking. Schmidt started focusing on developing software for enterprises to nip closer to the heels of Microsoft. This has only caused Microsoft to fire back with better more competitively priced alternatives that further entrench it as the exemplar for business software solutions. (sorry for the msft tangent).

This "social layer" is currently taking bits and pieces from current social network stars Facebook and Twitter (as in twitter and facebook have the opportunity to make your page rank higher in search. This is based on a combination of how many friends/followers an individual has and how many people retweet etc etc) but ultimately, Larry still wants Google to have a proprietary social network.

One of Larrys major change to the business regards employee compensation. Google is now basing internal bonuses on how "social" the work of its employees are. An employees bonus could either by 25% more or less depending on the metrics being used to gauge success.

In my previous blog post i go over the new Google +1 feature and how i feel it will ultimately fail as a social networking tool, but succeed because businesses want their online content/advertisements to rank higher by getting people with "Google Profiles" to "+1" their content. http://the-marketing-ninja.blogspot.com/2011/04/google-social-30-like-remixed.html.

Google Profiles allow you to tag your email address to a face. It gives  you the opportunity to say a little bit about you, the work you have done, share pictures from Picasa and a few other limiting features. This oddly seems like how Myspace/Facebook started out? Honestly, do we need another profile page. I know most people who have made one just set it up...then forgot about it. What is the real value in something that you do not use?

I learned from a great professor that people who just say "we will just have to wait and see" will always be left in the dust. I already know that this will fail in a social sense, sure it is cool to get recommendations from my friends that have gmail accounts but that is making a broad assessment from Google. Most other people i know that have gmail accounts are not my friends but classmates i have had to collaborate with or other random people. Most of my friends that i would want to get recommendations from are not on gmail, but are on Facebook. I know that this is a pretty biased perspective but honestly not everyone has a gmail account and not everyone is going to go out, get a gmail account and create a Google profile just for this feature. I think it required too much effort from individuals when they can get a better experience from pre-existing social networks.

Side Note: I do not hate Google in anyway, i just like to give(take) objective constructive criticism. Without the multiple SEO guides, webmaster tools, analytics software, advertising and webmaster blogs that they provide for free i would not have as robust a knowledge of SEO/Search as i do now.

Best Regards,
Antonio Esposito