Google Has a Facebook Problem

February 2, 2010

I read “Facebook Could Become World’s Leading News Reader (Sorry Google)” and was surprised. I knew that Facebook had a truckload of rich media, millions of users, and the love of older women. But I did not think about Facebook as a news reader. Here’s the passage that caught my attention:

Last week, Facebook’s Malorie Lucich posted to the company blog encouraging users set up their Facebook accounts for news reading. Lucich suggested becoming a “fan” of news organizations that publish to Facebook, then adding those connections to a dedicated “list” that only displays updates from news sources. You can subscribe that way to ReadWriteWeb here for example, to the New York Times, to the Environmental Justice Foundation or to thousands upon thousands of other organizations that publish regularly, usually with RSS under the hood.

I am not going to speculate on what Facebook could do. What’s clear to me is that Google has a Facebook problem. Google’s agility has not been sufficiently nimble to deal with the explosion of interest in social centric systems. Period.

Until Google begins acting like the pre-2006 Google, Facebook.com has a chance to become the new Google. This makes Google the “old” Microsoft. Microsoft and IBM become part of the original Burroughs-GE computer and software world. Fighting world battles on many fronts did not work for Rome, and it won’t work for Google.

Facebook is fighting in a way that reminds me of Google of yore. Just my opinion.

Stephen E Arnold, February 2, 2010

No one paid me to write about history. I suppose I should report this to someone at the National Archives, which is in the arms of XML love as Facebook is with its admirers.

Comments

One Response to “Google Has a Facebook Problem”

  1. jalen on September 29th, 2010 5:51 pm

    i use my psp and i have no pc

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