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Google's Social Strategy

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Re: Google's Social Strategy

#21

Post by Qz »

rorrr wrote: post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

I believe a more accurate phrase would be 'post content' rather than 'create content'.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#22

Post by hyperbovine »

javanix wrote: post #2

I really think that incorporating the +1 button into their actual rankings would cause Google more grief than it is worth. It would be like a built-in spamming vector for any less-than-legitimate site out there.

As noted in TFA, as well as on the product page itself (http://www.google.com/+1/button/), +1 only works if you are logged in to your Google account. Spamming it would require controlling a large number of fake accounts, which is not easy.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#23

Post by alexqgb »

Qz wrote: post #21
rorrr wrote: post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

I believe a more accurate phrase would be 'post content' rather than 'create content'.

Exactly. Like (ahem) YouTube links.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#24

Post by neilk »

rorrr wrote: post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

I think you're missing the point. Flickr has a grand total of somewhere over 5 billion photos. [1] Facebook adds four billion photos to its collection every month. [2]

I agree that many of the best photos will be reshared elsewhere, for now, but think ahead a little:

- Facebook could just improve their photo hosting just a bit -- or add a for-pay option to do so -- and then eliminate any other photo hosting site's reason for existing.

- If you think about all the photos ever taken, artistic photography has always been a tiny, tiny niche market. Photos have always been about remembering and sharing, not art. And this is true of Flickr just as much as Facebook. Nowadays this extends to recording our lives practically minute by minute. The metadata associated with this is invaluable -- yes, ad targeting is part of it, but the sheer documentary volume is also important for a search company like Google, even if we limit ourselves to what EXIF can tell us.

[1] http://blog.flickr.net/en/2010/09/19/5000000000/

[2] http://www.quora.com/How-many-photos-are-uploaded-to-Faceboo...

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#26

Post by rorrr »

neilk wrote: post #24
rorrr wrote: post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

I think you're missing the point. Flickr has a grand total of somewhere over 5 billion photos. [1] Facebook adds four billion photos to its collection every month . [2] I agree that many of the best photos will be reshared elsewhere, for now, but think ahead a little: - Facebook could just improve their photo hosting just a bit -- or add a for-pay option to do so -- and then eliminate any other photo hosting site's r…

Flickr is also pretty horrible if you're into photography. There's no systematic way to find good photos (e.g. top average rating). Both Flickr and Facebook are huge garbage dumps of photos. Facebook has absolutely no way to find great photos. Flick has some very limited functionality for it, but it could've been so much better. Neither were build to suit artists. They were designed to be garbage dumps.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#28

Post by bad_user »

rorrr wrote: post #26
neilk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. Flickr has a grand total of somewhere over 5 billion photos. [1] Facebook adds four billion photos to its collection every month . [2] I agree that many of the best photos will be reshared elsewhere, for now, but think ahead a little: - Facebook could just improve their photo hosting just a bit -- or add a for-pay option to do so -- and then eliminate any other photo hosting site's r…

Flickr is also pretty horrible if you're into photography. There's no systematic way to find good photos (e.g. top average rating). Both Flickr and Facebook are huge garbage dumps of photos. Facebook has absolutely no way to find great photos. Flick has some very limited functionality for it, but it could've been so much better. Neither were build to suit artists. They were designed to be garbage dumps.

Actually, I'm an amateur photographer, and Flickr is pretty sweet for me.

First of all, they are doing rating, though it may not be obvious how -- which I think is better than some dumb rating widget that can be abused -- and if Facebook would be able to show you pictures by rating, all you'd ever see are pictures of teenage girls in tight miniskirts, which get dozens of times better ratings then the pictures uploaded by my artistic-friends ;)

Here's what Flickr does: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/

Then, there is no cheaper alternative for keeping a backup in the cloud. A Pro account is $2 per month, with unlimited uploads. I know people that have over 50000 pictures uploaded using the original size (that's over 150 GB of data btw). And I actually wanted to upload my photos to S3 or to Google's Blogstore or to Dropbox, but it's gets much more expensive for such a volume (and currently I'm uploading 2 GB / month -- my baby boy is growing up :)).

Also, on Flickr you can access the EXIF headers of a picture -- and if you type your camera's model in their search box, you get thousands of photos for which you can access details like exposure, aperture and focal length, thus you can get better by examining the work of other people.

Also, it does feature a "share on facebook" button, with which you can publish a link + a thumbnail on Facebook.

Yes it sucks, but it is better than any alternative I ever tried. Pretty tired of hearing "if Facebook does this or that" too -- I'll be happy if they do, but they haven't and they aren't interested in art -- they are more interested in tight miniskirts of teenagers that get massive upvotes ;)

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#29

Post by thailandstartup »

Apocryphon wrote: post #27

Once again I ask: if Google fails to understand "social" the same way Microsoft in the '90s failed to understand the internet, what will Facebook fail to understand?

They already fail to understand Privacy - but maybe that's more of a bet that it is an old fashioned concept. Maybe they'll fail to understand Social Compartmentalization - I don't want everyone in my life to know everyone else. Maybe that's just my old fashioned ways too.

But my bet - they'll fail to understand Location.

The next big thing is Location, Location, Location!

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