Which Is More Important: Technology Or Community?
from the seems-like-it dept
There's an interesting little blurb making the rounds today about Rupert Murdoch claiming Google could have bought MySpace three months before he did at half the price. That's interesting in its own right -- but in thinking about how few acquisitions of this type Google does, it becomes clear that Google values technology over community by a long shot. The reason Google didn't want to buy MySpace was because it thought it could build the same thing. That's a technology answer, that ignores the community side of things -- which isn't so easy to build. It's also why Orkut is barely discussed these days, outside of Brazil. However, if you compare the acquisitions Google has made over the last few years to those that Yahoo and News Corp have made, it's pretty clear that Yahoo and News Corp are buying community, while Google has focused more on buying engineers. So, it's no surprise that Google would turn down a chance to acquire MySpace. The technology was (and still is) nothing special. It's the value of the community that they didn't see (or didn't care about). The real question is which strategy is going to make the most sense in the long run. Google has obviously done quite well with its technology focused solution. While MySpace is growing like gangbusters, there are still some questions about how well that community can be monetized.
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Good point.
An idea of how community could benefit Google: we all know their search results are sometimes watered-down by link farm pages or simply pages that are close but not quite what you are searching for. How about giving people the ability to give a yes or no vote to specific search results? They would get some truly interesting data and scads of it. Something to think about.
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Re: Good point.
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Re: Good point.
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It's about control
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Re: It's about control
Succinct but possibly wrong. The converse may in fact be true.
Look at the stifling organisational controls on every form of community that isn't private. Consider the topical MySpace, Facebook and SecondLife debacles in the news and you will see "community" in this sense is very much about control.
The consider the machinations of PirateBay and the RIAA, free open source software, encryption... technology is something that is *EXTREMELY* difficult to control as many are now learning.
I think Google are very smart indeed. I see their rationale, stunningly brilliant in its simplicity and wisdom.
Empower people. Give people utility and something they want and they will come. Empower them enough and they build their own community using their own rules, not some walled garden nanny micro-state that is just a glorified photo forum when all said and done.
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Re: Good point.
I would bet that googles next step is to ( if they do not already ) begin using their profile tracking systems to more directly impact the results. Take the vast numbers of individual profiles and determine from them the statistics that indicate a human movement pattern on the web. Use this to determine which sites hold these humans the longest. Have the most page hits. Use this as a proof of realness to indicate to pagerank which pages are genuine, and raise their relative influence over the link mesh.
From this the otherwise crosslink infested farms begin to stand out against the data, and are negatively impacted by their lack of interaction with the genuine web, specifically the users thereof. Links into and out of these black holes that do not traffic in substantial human clicks would be severed in the algorithm, and hopefully drop from the rankings.
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Orkut is more popular in our country...very few are regular users of myspace...(I am from India btw) as well as other emerging countries...Google doesn't need to acquire for the sake of a market...Untapped and emerging markets may be a better one to focus at...
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Google Had No Need
Google understands that the one with the biggest behavioral database wins. Rupert Murdoch was simply buying marketshare he did not own. Google knew they could already reach those people so why bother buying a company to target customers they already own? Google only buys things which expand on the amount of passive data they can collect and analyze on users or tech whose patents or database are a future risk to the company.
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tech is community and vice versa
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giggle could build a better myspace in 3 months
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Maybe...just maybe....
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don't
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I agree Defy
That being said.
Google is extremely successful at providing individuals with the ability to simplify daily tasks in a very efficient manner. gmail is connecting individuals by providing a medium to share information with one another, without have to broadcast the user's information to the entire community. i use google for many things, googlescholar is great, i can get directions and maps extremely easy and even though i'm yet to use froogle, my dad claims there are benefits there that ebay can not necessarily provide.
Its nice to see google realizes they can control the community without having to actual monitor it to the amount myspace does. defy was right on by saying it's all about the information they can provide to individuals, and how beneficial their tools are for the community.
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orkut vs myspace
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Orkut way Better
whatever you might think....
Simplicity of Orkut Rocks....
Myspace is just a Spamspace.....with an Ugly interface
Orkut has a great Community network...and its easy to find like minded people on Orkut.....which i sorely miss on myspace...
Myspace is slow too...
In India and Brazil orkut is Huuuuuuuuuge.......
in india hardly anybody's aware of Myspace's existence...forget about using it....
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