Yesterday a presentation from the research lead for Google’s social team, Paul Adams, began spreading around the web. The presentation provides deeper insight into Google’s existing concept of “social” and could help us further understand what the company believes is weaknesses in Facebook’s armor as they prepared to launch a “Facebook killer“. There were a number of themes that were consistent throughout the presentation, all of which we’ve included below.
Strong Vs Weak Ties Within Multiple Groups
The overall theme of the presentation was consistent: we have multiple groups and within those groups there are individuals who we have strong ties with and many more who we have weak ties with. There are also even temporary ties, like the person at the restaurant who served you food last night. While getting the system right on this is extremely difficult, the strong vs. weak ties is something that Facebook has yet to enable users to control.
Instead, the strength of relationships on Facebook is determined algorithmically: the more we interact (and/or view) a person on the site, the more likely they’ll show up in our news feed. So far the only way Facebook has been able to empower users to control access to information is through friends lists, a feature that even Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged is for “advanced” users of the site.
If Paul Adams’ presentation is accepted as one of the primary perspectives of Google on social, perhaps the argument for Google’s new “Facebook killer” would be that there needs to be a more effective user-interface (UI) which helps users to control these various groups. Rather than dismissing it as a service for “advanced” users, perhaps the interface has simply not evolved far enough to give users the actual control that they want.
Stab At Facebook’s Transparency
Facebook’s biggest threat is their own lack of transparency. While the company has called the “Instant Personalization” program a “test”, the company hasn’t made changes to it and is now the subject of multiple class actions as well as increasing criticism from privacy advocates. While Mark Zuckerberg has been somewhat clear about the company’s intentions, to describe the actions as “transparent” would be giving the company too much credit.
The reality is that while Facebook may see increasing engagement on the site, people are mad. I regularly talk with people who feel as though Facebook has taken advantage of them and haven’t been transparent, randomly switching up their privacy agreement with users and it may actually have driven some users away.
That would support the argument presented by Paul Adams in the slide below which states “If your privacy practices aren’t transparent, then you introduce doubt. Doubt leads to lower usage.” Only Facebook knows how great of an impact the latest privacy fiasco had on the company but it’s clear that Google sees this as a weakness.
Privacy Is Still Too Complicated
While it’s easy to suggest that the UI behind Facebook’s existing privacy settings are still too complex (as we already suggested), there’s still a single overarching theme: managing privacy is still too complicated. The greater question at hand is whether or not Google can come up with a more efficient system for managing privacy. It’s clear that privacy is the kink in Facebook’s armor as the company has made a number of stumbles in the past couple years surrounding privacy.
Even Facebook has acknowledged that privacy is too complicated, but they also suggested that the latest privacy settings would be the most permanent of all the privacy settings so far. Google has an organization filled with some of the smartest minds in the world and if the “Facebook killer” rumors are true, they believe that there’s enough weaknesses in Facebook to create a legitimate competitor.
The presentation below that has been circulating around over the past couple days would suggest that the company definitely believes Facebook to have inherit problems. It also seems to set up a context for understanding the new product that Google plans to roll out to take on the social networking giant. Do you think Facebook should be concerned about Google taking them on?
Do you think privacy management is Facebook’s core weakness? Do you even care about your privacy on Facebook?
Debbie should have just put her friends into different Facebook Friend’s Lists and set her privacy settings to block certain stuff from the 10 year old kids. Its easy. She just needs to learn how to use Facebook.
I did that and then they changed the settings and i could no longer see my friends list only feed.
@Justin: Look at the way MS went with Hotmail after buying it. They also thought “people will have to accept that free mail is limited in storage and has no quality anti-spam or anti-virus”.
Until Google introduced Gmail…
If the target audience of any service is “the public in general” the service will have to be clear and simple so the target audience doesn’t have to “learn” or RTFM
That was a good summary, and the slideshow (although I skimmed parts of it) was kind of enlightening. Growing up with all this social-networking stuff, you don’t really *think* about how “friends” and social networks exist in meatspace. thanks!
Google talking about privacy is like a fox in charge of the hen. The overwhelming majority of their revenues is selling targeted ads. Unless they find new products the only growth can happen by refining targeting and enabling better conversion, which means understanding their customer behavior better which sounds like less privacy to me.
The grouping feature on Facebook is not very user-friendly at all, and Google can definitely take advantage of that. If anyone can challenge Facebook, it would be Google.
One does not have a “kink” in the armor…rather, it’s a “chink” in the armor.
inherit - to receive by succession
inherent - existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute
Inherent, not inherit
The one major problem with this theory is stated within it, “If your privacy practices aren’t transparent, then you introduce doubt. Doubt leads to lower usage.”
Google has the sketchiest of privacy policies, demanding they see all and know all, while being almost completely opaque. While it’s quite plausible that a website with a better privacy policy and social understanding could undermine Facebook, Google has been playing the gorgon role far too long to start playing Perseus now.
Yeah, mocking vocabulary fails is definitely what this whole phenomenon is all about.
LOL… Google’s new “Facebook killer”… seems that you don’t catch google’s business model, google don’t kill… google is kinda borg asimilating things to show up ads
Today I FINALLY tweaked the FB privacy settings and grouped “friends” into more accurate lists. They really should make it easier to find and implement the controls. Otherwise, unless somebody comes up with a smoother, more easily loading social network, nothing will topple Facebook. (I kept my MySpace account but can no longer access it. I get that stupid “Your browser is out of date” message! I’ll be posting about FB later on my blog:
http://dave-lucas.blosgpot.com
I kent spel
http://dave-lucas.blogspot.com
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interesting topic,
Facebook entered the social business earlier than Google and already own 125 million daily users (500 million accounts). That’s a big capital as people don’t give up easily a thousand pictures, posts… to switch to another social platform. They would switch if the gap is platform bring more than what they would lose. Donno if it is feasible to have an import functionality from Google social platform ?
Well, back on our 125 million daily users, others.. around 300 million are ready to look somewhere else if there isn’t anything better. On top of that there are still 1425 million internet users ready to have a try !
The market is opened and Google is taking a good way by creating its own social platform.
Creating what ?
Think about it… Facebook was creating by kids for kids.. and that’s the main weakness. Facebook was not created from a global vision on how to manage your social life. If Google took that angle, there is really a big challenger in there. To go a bit deeper, what i mean is that facebook is about games, photos, short messages, likes and what has been created is really basic and full of added layers. The best way is to start from scratch and think global, create a flexible interface, keep a few options opened.
What has to be created is not that complicated, it can be created by anyone of us.
i blog @ http://www.julienchabe.wordpress.com
This presentation misses the point that one of the key attractions of using Facebook is seeing, and being about to start conversations with, your friends friends even if they are outside of your own circle(s) of friends. For example my friends colleague may comment on a post by my friend. I may then comment and then my friends mum may chip in. Assuming everyone is respectful and open minded this gives all involved a really buzz and allowed conversations to take place that have been impossible until now. A system that ring fences people is just replicating what already exists so doesn’t really serve any new purpose. Those enclosed conversations already take place in places/mediums such as forums.
Facebook’s open approach allows new exciting things to happen. If this is allowed to continue it will change people for the better. They will become more open minded. Taboos will be reduced and people will be more accepting and open about who they actually are and more respectful of how others are. Perhaps that’s the point of the discussion that’s taking place over privacy. Does FB have a role to play in social reform? Should it have? Or should we encourage approaches such as Google’s to try and restrict this. Okay, I’m a liberal, but I would rather live in a world where people don’t feel the need to hide from themselves and others. And I’m certain of one thing. I trust people who are open more than those who hid things about themselves.
Ps, no need to comment on any spelling / grammar errors, I’m dyslexic so don’t care, as long as you get the gist!
Thinking about it I think the Google approach is more an improvement too or would replace how we use separate forums at the moment rather than a threat to Facebook. Better group management in FB would certainly be nice to control how the feed displays what you’re more interested in. My feed is full of stuff from the people I see more often (Googles point). But I want Facebook to tell me more about the people I don’t see often. It feels good to know that people are off enjoying themselves and seeing little snippets into there lives is nice.
This group management would certainly benefit instant messaging and controlling your contactability status in IM and on your phone. I would for example love to scroll down the contact list on my phone and see a contactability status against each person with comments like (‘busy’, ‘in meeting’, ‘I’m bored, call me’, ‘anyone fancy meeting for a drink’, etc). For these to work you would have to have different status targeted towards different groups of friends / contacts. But these features are very different for being a Facebook killer.