NEW YORK (AP) — Google is not building its new Plus service simply to have an online hangout Facebook.
Google's new social networking endeavor is, rather, if you try to gain valuable insight into people's lives and relationships. This could help the company do a better job of targeting criteria ads so that advertisers would pay more and have less reason to spend their money on Facebook.
If it succeeds, Plus represents Google's best shot yet at muscling into a market that has threatened to bring down the Internet search and advertising leader, as Facebook leads the way in making the online world of social.
In addition, Google's carefully scripted venture to a territory where its previous efforts have been duds.
On the surface, Plus similar to Facebook – with a Google touch. It lets people share photos and status messages, chat with friends and acquaintances and follow the News. A prominent feature called circles, you can organize the people they interact with in groups, family, close friends or fishing buddies. Users can choose to share stuff only among certain circles.
Google Plus is still in a limited test phase, and invites to join is much sought-after. Only time will tell if it takes the public or if there is too little, too late to face off with Facebook and Twitter in the social sphere – just as Microsoft has managed to surpass Google in search, with latecomer Bing.
Google Inc. has done quite well without their own social networks. Its online Search engine accounts for two-thirds of the issues in the United States, and even more in parts of Europe. Revenues are expected to be higher than the 36 billion dollars this year, most of it from text ads that appear alongside search results and other Web content. Google reports its latest quarterly results Thursday.
Online behaviors are changing, however. People spend more time on Facebook and other social networks. They are relying increasingly on their friends ' recommendations when choosing where to eat and which movies to watch.
Google, meanwhile, the bungled previous social media efforts. Share Wave killed quickly because users do not know what to make of it. Buzz, a later company, was the center of a privacy fiasco. Google had been too aggressive automatically create circle of friends, who unwittingly revealed who they've corresponded with in Gmail.
Early responses on Google Plus has been positive. But there is no guarantee of success. When Google botched a social media effort after another, Facebook grew exponentially.
Today is sign half of Facebook's 750 million worldwide users in to the site every day. That's about the entire population of the United States and the business areas combined. More than 250 million people participate with Facebook in any form on external websites every month around the world. They do this by clicking on the ubiquitous "like" and "recommend" buttons on news and other Web sites or by logging in to sites using their Facebook password.
Google's Chairman and former CEO, Eric Schmidt, has admitted that the company failed to respond to Facebooks hot fast enough. His successor, Google founder Larry Page, has made social networks one of his main priorities since he took office in April.
"We do not think it is a coincidence that (Google Plus) was introduced less than three months after the page returned to the CEO post," said Standard and poor's equity analyst Scott Kessler in a note to clients.
Facebooks main advantage is the enormous trove of information that shared its users about themselves through about 4 billion posts and connections that they collectively every day. Facebook knows what people read, eat and watch. It knows who are friends with whom, what friends people trust recommendations about what shoes to buy and which plumber to hire.
Google cannot index the most information on its search engine because Facebook don't share it. Instead, Facebook incorporated a search partnership with Google rival Microsoft Corp. In may, Microsoft's Bing search engine started to use information from people's Facebook settings to modify your search results. This means Facebook users who are looking for shoes or concert tickets on Bing can get results that are tailored to the interests on the Web site. For people who are not signed in to Facebook when they are looking for, perhaps Microsoft's search engine still highlight the links that other Facebook users have recommended.
Google gives a disadvantage. Unless it can obtain similar data by using a social services own, left Google with a formula that sorts through the pattern of Web links, and other computer data to determine whether a site should rank in its recommendation. The system has become increasingly vulnerable to manipulation of the sites that rank higher than their competitors. Google search results can therefore not be as useful as recommendations from an analysis of what they have already signalled that they want by pressing a Facebook button.
There is another important way that the social tasks can help Google.
On Facebook, companies can focus their advertising with razor-sharp precision, given to all types of information that people like parts, such as a preference for Coke over Pepsi or if they have ever been married. They may, for example, show a certain Blog ad only to single men aged 17-41, who lives in New York, is Yankee fans and enjoy the "World of warcraft" video games.
"It is the largest telephone cards to Facebooks marketers," says Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst with eMarketer.
Advertisers are usually willing to pay more for such an approach because they were pitching consumers most likely to buy. Google is doing a good job already targeting ads based on what people search for write on e-mail messages and watch YouTube. Social data could help Google do even better.
Danny Sullivan, who follow Google closely as Chief Editor for the Web site Search Engine Land, said that Google about Google Plus succeed, would have "a good insurance" between the growth of social networks.
The need became apparent when Google's deal to include Twitter updates into their search results expired recently, said Sullivan. Google has temporarily shut down its "real-time" search feature, although it said users stay tuned while it explores how Google Plus will figure into it.
That said, Google Plus does not need to necessarily be a Facebook clone.
"Google needs to have a social strategy that is relevant for Google and how people use Google applications," says Susan Etlinger, analyst at altimeter Group. "It is very different from how people use Facebook. "
Facebook is currently an online hangout in particular. People, it is possible to scan status updates, chat with a friend or watch the latest screenshots, without necessarily having a specifically in mind.
With Google, people usually a case of looking for a hair stylist, or send an e-mail message about an upcoming party. Google's mission is to make their existing products social as "social" is becoming the norm for online activity, she said.
"Eventually everything will be a social network," said Etlinger. "Social features will in all things on the Web."
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