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Friday, July 09, 2010 12:01 AM/EST

Google's Template for Facebook Killer Lies in Real Life Social Network

Google may be rewriting the playbook for Facebook, if a fat slide deck traversing the Web is an accurate template of what the search engine has in store for its alleged Facebook killer Google Me.

In late June, news trickled out via Twitter tweet from Digg CEO Kevin Rose that Google was working on Google Me, a social software service designed to ratchet up the rivalry the search engine tried to start with Google Buzz.

While speculation ran from the notion that Google Me was simply an augmentation of Google Profiles to a a full-on social network combining orkut and Google Buzz, no one had any concrete information.

Through the first week of July, that fact hasn't changed. However, Paul Adams, a senior user experience researcher at Google who worked on Google Buzz, has rolled out a 216-page slide deck called the "The Real Life Social Network."

The gist of his presentation is that while Facebook is great for sharing, its construct is that humans have one big social circle.

Adams argues, perhaps obviously so, that people have multiple social circles and therefore need to have multiple privacy walls.

In one example, he explains that Debbie has been friended by some of the 10-year-old students she teaches how to swim.

This is a questionable choice right out of the gate; it's OK to be friendly with the kids, but it's another to allow them to friend her on a social network where adult content is rampantly shared.

Indeed, Debbie also has Facebook friends who enjoy romps in gay bars in Los Angeles and post pictures of their escapades on the social network. Where the 10-year-olds can see them. How awkward!

Adams notes on slide 14:

Facebook itself is not the problem here. The problem here is that these are different parts of Debbie's life that would never have been exposed to each other offline were linked online.

Adams notes on the next slide that the online social profiles and networks we create online don't rightly sync with our real-world networks.

This is very true. Where else would these 10-year-olds meet Debbie's friends but on Facebook, a no-holds-barred real for interactions?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants you to believe that people have one identity and that therefore everything anybody puts on Facebook is grounds for sharing with anyone else. Anyone with two identities is being disingenuous.

Unfortunately, that's an obtuse view blind to (accidentally or deliberately) the fact that people have one identity, but different groups of friends.

This sort of hucksterism won't wash in Washington, D.C., or with users like Debbie who face a conundrum: how does one manage the multiple social circles they've collected over the years that typify their life experiences?

In Facebook, they can't. Ironically, Adams said Facebook is not the problem, but neither he nor Google believe that for a second.

Adams exposed a fundamental design flaw that shows Facebook has a narrow view of social interactions and Google wants to leverage this for its own social designs.

He even noted that Facebook's approach creates opportunities for Google. in his presentation, Adams argues that people tend to have four to six social groups, with two to 10 people in each group.

Perhaps Google plans a social network where people's relationships are properly vetted and bucketed. Maybe that's what this purported Google Me effort is all about, but I don't know. No one knows. Except Google.

If you're in their social circle, they might tell you. For now, we wait and we watch. In the meantime, Adams' deck should keep you busy:

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Comments (3)

Nate :

with FB, can you not precisely customize, and even create groups, and specify which people/groups can see whatever you post?

Stacy :

Google has had so many failed attempts at what Facebook is doing now and I just don't think that they can out-run the facebook hype. The key element to out-running facebook would be creating a service that will persuade each and every user to move to that separate network. Is this possible? I really don't think so.

Amando :

Dtacy: A Facebook cometitor does not have to 'persuade each and every user to move.' Facebook never convinced each and every MySpace user to move. This is setting the bar unrealistically high. It's not necessary.

Nate: Facebook lets you organise your contacts into groups and lets you specify to an extent what they can see. But in late 2009 Mark Zuckerberg decided without notice that all of your contacts, and in some cases the world, could see some things on your page even if you had already instructed Facebook to restrict access to these things. This included your image, your name and basic data, pages you had marked and--most alarmingly for preofessionals--the entire contents of your content list. All of the woman's ten-year-olds could find and contact any of her gay dancer friends without her even knowing. Reporters found suddenly that all of their sources were blown open to view by their reporter colleagues. Real estate agents found that all of their clients were clown open to the view of their colleagues in the real estate business. Your crazy Aunt Mabel who thinks air conditioning is from the Devil could now find all of your colleagues at work. The singles you met on Are You Interested and added as friends without knowing anything much about them could view and contact everyone else in your contacts list.

All this, in spite of the fact that Facebook had already been told to keep the groups distinct and had already developed and rolled out the tools to do so. With one's entire Rolodex thrown open to view by all, the only recourse for a FB user who wanted to keep two groups separate was to 'unfriend' everyone in one group or the other. Goodbye, students. Goodbye, colleagues. Goodbye, relatives. Goodbye, potential dates. And, of course, hello, explanations--as former contacts wonder why they are not your 'friends' any more.

Faced with huge protest, Zuckerberg restored some privacy options weeks later. He said the lesson he had learned was 'don't mess with privacy for a long time.' Note that he didn't say never. After all the fuss, he's still planning to do it.

By the time some of the privacy features returned the damage had been done. No one who paid any attention during all this trusts Facebook with their information. Today thousands of people, especially professional people, are ready to jump to the first viable alternative.

A market exists it and Google is in great shape to provide one. Zuckerberg knows this.

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