7 ms·

Cloning Is Lame. Google Should Do It To Facebook Anyway.

19 points by alexandros 16y ago

robryan 16y ago
I think something they should do is separate it as Bing is with microsoft. Similar to how Chrome is done, it's cross advertised but most of it's function is Google independent.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
Google already did clone facebook. http://www.orkut.com http://www.orkut.com
- bombs 16y ago
  Orkut launched two weeks before Facebook.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    They could Re-architect Orkut so that it can run P2P and give the result to Diaspora.
    - chengas123 16y ago
      I'm so sick of hearing about Diaspora. These kids don't have any product yet and as far as I can tell there is no reason to expect what they're building will be successful.
      - stcredzero 16y ago
        These kids don't have any product yet and as far as I can tell there is no reason to expect what they're building will be successful. Most of the challenge will be in marketing. If they can get a hipster fringe to adopt it and give them real value, they can use this to bootstrap themselves. (Much as Facebook did with the college crowd.)
kyoji 16y ago
So the author spends half the article talking about how lame and counter-productive cloning is, ie "...Instead they tweak a little here, add a little there, and launch it as a variation of the original. That’s evolution, not stealing." then goes on to say that's Google's only choice? I don't believe it. Google wasn't first to market with apps like Gmail or Google Docs, but their implementation is arguably much better than the competition. Why cant Google do this with social networking? He says: "What Google shouldn’t do – must not do – is try to tie the service to other Google products for the wrong reasons." This makes no sense. I think a social networking service that utilized Google's other services effectively would be a very powerful thing. I could see tight integration between events and your Google calender, or sharing Google docs/waves easily with friends. Google has a massive portfolio of very useful services; it would be foolhardy to not use them if they were to attempt a "Facebook clone" as the author so lovingly calls it.
k33n 16y ago
> And that’s why it’s time for Google to just plane clone Facebook. What's a plane clone, Michael Arrington?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  A 2-dimensional clone?
  - ulysses 16y ago
    Wow, that'd be pretty useful terminology. Most clones, particularly of the "programmed a version of foo site in just 7 hours" type, are indeed 2-dimensional clones, just copying the look without implementing the underlying complexity. "Plane clone" is definitely in my vocabulary, now.
stcredzero 16y ago
Some young outlaw hacker needs to make a name for himself (herself?) by open-source publishing a perfectly undetectable screen-scraper for Facebook that outputs all of a user's data in an open format as XML or JSON.
- theBobMcCormick 16y ago
  That wouldn't address the major problems with Facebook, which is A) That Facebook would still have your personal data and would possibly still be misusing it. B) For most people, Facebook still has the largest "critical mass" of your friends, family, etc., which makes it difficult to pointless to move to a different social networking site.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    A) Too late to do anything about the data Facebook already has. Long Term Solution: a network the users control. B) If there is another site that's painless to migrate to, then this isn't an issue. That's why such an outlaw tool would be useful.
    - theBobMcCormick 16y ago
      "B" still seems to be missing. Certainly not impossible, after all, look at how quickly FaceBook eclipsed MySpace. But I haven't seen the next big social network site on the horizon, have you?
    - roc 16y ago
      > "a network the users control" Yeah, see, that's the trick. The users don't want to. They explicitly abdicated control when they signed up to Facebook. They knew what they were doing. They know that they can get games and chat and publishing and status messages without Facebook. And they know that using Facebook requires giving them access to all sorts of data they might sell to... well, anyone willing to pay. Of course, so could/does Google. And Amazon. And their ISP. And their phone company. And their credit card company. If users cared about control, they'd still be using email and blogs and separate accounts for separate services from separate vendors, etc. Like we few holdouts. But you simply cannot make a social network site work without giving away a shocking quantity of data. You either get something that works like Facebook (warts and all) or something that works like hotmail+yahoo games+classmates.com+icq+flickr+twitter Users already chose. I think they chose wrong, but no Facebook-knockoff offering 'control' is going to change it. They want the integration and ease-of-use that requires Facebook have access to all that data.
dotcom 16y ago
Don't waste you precious energy to worry about 'what should somebody do' ;-) Have a cold beer, go for a walk think about yourself ;-) Google won't change the world if we don't buy it...
benpbenp 16y ago
> Facebook’s self serve ad business is exploding, say our sources, and may be significantly more robust than even the most favorable third party forecasts predict. Is it just me or is this a silly, meaningless sentence. Are you predicting it is more robust? Then that makes you the most favorable third party. If not, and if you have no evidence to offer, then why mention this mere possibility?
Keyframe 16y ago
... in truly open data with simple export tools and easy to understand privacy settings. I’d recommend going with the Twitter model on privacy – it’s all public or it’s all private (for approved friends only). It’s not hard to understand, and very few people actually choose the private option. I see person who wrote this doesn't have much contact with females, especially female groups and their behavior on facebook. "This is public, this I only want some to see, this can be viewed by my friends but not that bitch"... Hell I don't understand those privacy settings on facebook, but I sure know every female I know knows them and knows how to use it.
storm 16y ago
I'm skeptical of the assumption made in so many of these articles: that Google will surely be annihilated by Facebook if they don't act quickly to usurp their social networking crown. Social networks come, and social networks go. Sure, Facebook is run rather more competently than, say, MySpace ever was. But it isn't at all clear how big uniques and a whole lot of people playing Farmville equate to being a contender for Google-killing internet domination. I suspect that a lot of this breathless punditry is going look very silly ~5 years from now.

19 points by alexandros 16y ago

I think something they should do is separate it as Bing is with microsoft. Similar to how Chrome is done, it's cross advertised but most of it's function is Google independent.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

Google already did clone facebook. http://www.orkut.com http://www.orkut.com

bombs 16y ago
Orkut launched two weeks before Facebook.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  They could Re-architect Orkut so that it can run P2P and give the result to Diaspora.
  - chengas123 16y ago
    I'm so sick of hearing about Diaspora. These kids don't have any product yet and as far as I can tell there is no reason to expect what they're building will be successful.
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      These kids don't have any product yet and as far as I can tell there is no reason to expect what they're building will be successful. Most of the challenge will be in marketing. If they can get a hipster fringe to adopt it and give them real value, they can use this to bootstrap themselves. (Much as Facebook did with the college crowd.)

kyoji 16y ago

So the author spends half the article talking about how lame and counter-productive cloning is, ie "...Instead they tweak a little here, add a little there, and launch it as a variation of the original. That’s evolution, not stealing." then goes on to say that's Google's only choice? I don't believe it. Google wasn't first to market with apps like Gmail or Google Docs, but their implementation is arguably much better than the competition. Why cant Google do this with social networking? He says: "What Google shouldn’t do – must not do – is try to tie the service to other Google products for the wrong reasons." This makes no sense. I think a social networking service that utilized Google's other services effectively would be a very powerful thing. I could see tight integration between events and your Google calender, or sharing Google docs/waves easily with friends. Google has a massive portfolio of very useful services; it would be foolhardy to not use them if they were to attempt a "Facebook clone" as the author so lovingly calls it.

k33n 16y ago

> And that’s why it’s time for Google to just plane clone Facebook. What's a plane clone, Michael Arrington?

stcredzero 16y ago
A 2-dimensional clone?
- ulysses 16y ago
  Wow, that'd be pretty useful terminology. Most clones, particularly of the "programmed a version of foo site in just 7 hours" type, are indeed 2-dimensional clones, just copying the look without implementing the underlying complexity. "Plane clone" is definitely in my vocabulary, now.

stcredzero 16y ago

Some young outlaw hacker needs to make a name for himself (herself?) by open-source publishing a perfectly undetectable screen-scraper for Facebook that outputs all of a user's data in an open format as XML or JSON.

theBobMcCormick 16y ago
That wouldn't address the major problems with Facebook, which is A) That Facebook would still have your personal data and would possibly still be misusing it. B) For most people, Facebook still has the largest "critical mass" of your friends, family, etc., which makes it difficult to pointless to move to a different social networking site.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  A) Too late to do anything about the data Facebook already has. Long Term Solution: a network the users control. B) If there is another site that's painless to migrate to, then this isn't an issue. That's why such an outlaw tool would be useful.
  - theBobMcCormick 16y ago
    "B" still seems to be missing. Certainly not impossible, after all, look at how quickly FaceBook eclipsed MySpace. But I haven't seen the next big social network site on the horizon, have you?
  - roc 16y ago
    > "a network the users control" Yeah, see, that's the trick. The users don't want to. They explicitly abdicated control when they signed up to Facebook. They knew what they were doing. They know that they can get games and chat and publishing and status messages without Facebook. And they know that using Facebook requires giving them access to all sorts of data they might sell to... well, anyone willing to pay. Of course, so could/does Google. And Amazon. And their ISP. And their phone company. And their credit card company. If users cared about control, they'd still be using email and blogs and separate accounts for separate services from separate vendors, etc. Like we few holdouts. But you simply cannot make a social network site work without giving away a shocking quantity of data. You either get something that works like Facebook (warts and all) or something that works like hotmail+yahoo games+classmates.com+icq+flickr+twitter Users already chose. I think they chose wrong, but no Facebook-knockoff offering 'control' is going to change it. They want the integration and ease-of-use that requires Facebook have access to all that data.

dotcom 16y ago

Don't waste you precious energy to worry about 'what should somebody do' ;-) Have a cold beer, go for a walk think about yourself ;-) Google won't change the world if we don't buy it...

benpbenp 16y ago

> Facebook’s self serve ad business is exploding, say our sources, and may be significantly more robust than even the most favorable third party forecasts predict. Is it just me or is this a silly, meaningless sentence. Are you predicting it is more robust? Then that makes you the most favorable third party. If not, and if you have no evidence to offer, then why mention this mere possibility?

Keyframe 16y ago

... in truly open data with simple export tools and easy to understand privacy settings. I’d recommend going with the Twitter model on privacy – it’s all public or it’s all private (for approved friends only). It’s not hard to understand, and very few people actually choose the private option. I see person who wrote this doesn't have much contact with females, especially female groups and their behavior on facebook. "This is public, this I only want some to see, this can be viewed by my friends but not that bitch"... Hell I don't understand those privacy settings on facebook, but I sure know every female I know knows them and knows how to use it.

storm 16y ago

I'm skeptical of the assumption made in so many of these articles: that Google will surely be annihilated by Facebook if they don't act quickly to usurp their social networking crown. Social networks come, and social networks go. Sure, Facebook is run rather more competently than, say, MySpace ever was. But it isn't at all clear how big uniques and a whole lot of people playing Farmville equate to being a contender for Google-killing internet domination. I suspect that a lot of this breathless punditry is going look very silly ~5 years from now.