My favorite blog right now is the wonderfully titled Alexander van Elsas’s Weblog on new media & technologies and their effect on social behavior. I'm struggling to keep up with all the great things that Alex writes, so I wanted to give a quick summary of some my favorite posts here, as an introduction and to get my own head around it!
In Facebook will be no match for Google, he talks about Google's recent purchase of the social conversation site Jaiku, as well as Google's own social networking venture called Orkut. Alex makes some really great points about why he thinks Google has a much better understanding of social networks than Facebook does:
Google doesn't have to build a social network as its primary strategy. Unlike Facebook, Orkut is simply another means to an end. Google is the connectivity on the web, and Orkut only is one aspect of that strategy. Think Gmail, think Google earth, thin iGoogle. All major Internet platforms than can easily be integrated into one compelling service for the user.
He closes with this excellent observation:
While Facebook is building walls around their service, trying to increase the value of their network (instead of value for its users), Google is becoming the major operating system on the Internet (Search, Social Networks, mail, RSS) and Mobile (Google Phone, Jaiku). Given this strategy I would put my cards on Google, not Facebook. No way they will be able to match that. The big question now becomes whether or not Google will be able to integrate all these services and still remain open as a platform thus providing more value to its users.
In The end of a defensive music industry era he examines Radiohead's decision to let fans decided what to pay for their music -- which I agree is a good idea, however from an earlier post I do wish they had a better site for this...
And finally, in 10 ways to improve web 2.0 and move into an era of true interaction, he continues a discussion that I got involved in last week as well, and makes some really great points about how to get to the next evolution of the web.
Check out Alex's blog and subscribe to his feed -- he's a smart guy and we can all learn from him!
1 comment:
Google seems to have a finger in everything. I do remember an article a few months ago that talked about the need for Google to focus on what it does best. Thanks for posting the article. It was a good read.
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