Given Facebook’s massive base of hundreds of millions of users worldwide, it would take an investment by a massive web company to rival that. It may come soon, if a tweet by the founder of Digg.com Kevin Rose, is any indication.
“Huge rumor: Google to launch Facebook competitor very soon ‘Google Me,’ very credible source,” wrote Kevin Rose.
Between Google Profiles, Buzz and Latitudes, the company has already put together the ground work for personal pages, status updates and location sharing. “Latitude has 3 million users reportedly (per Google), but Buzz may be all but dead,” said Greg Sterling, contributing editor to Search Engine Land. “[But] a merger of Latitude and Buzz would be interesting and potentially useful.
This is in addition to online communication and collaboration tool Google Wave, but none of the above mentioned features have the mindshare of Facebook. “Google Buzz has not made the mark Google hoped it would,” said PCMag.com editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff. “And Wave is exciting, but still far too esoteric for most people. In other words, Google has yet to get it right on the social-interaction side. I expect it will keep trying — because it can — until it does.”
“What Google and everyone else has to remember is that Facebook was not an overnight success,” said Ulanoff. “It took years to get here and it s still on the rise. I doubt Google Buzz will ever challenge Facebook.”
“You know, I’m not sure that Google should try to take on Facebook,” Harry McCracken, the founder of tech site Technologizer.com. “The fact that Buzz got off to such a rocky start shows that people don’t necessarily want their relationship with Google to be a foundation for social networking.”
“So far, Google’s failed to have a hit in the social-networking space, swinging and largely missing with both Orkut and Buzz,” noted Search Engine Land’s editor in chief Danny Sullivan. “It’s unclear whether a third, new service (or a renamed Buzz) will do that much better.”
Source: FoxNews
