Google Working on their Social Media

Although we may know Google for their search engine and successful efforts in areas like mobile devices and applications, one area that may have been overlooked are their attempts at social media. Google actually has its own social network called Orkut. It was associated with Google Friend Connect, which helped develop OpenSocial and Google Profiles. Google was hoping that these networks would become something like Facebook, where people can share photos, ideas, and converse with one another. However, it didn’t receive so much feedback or attention as other social networks Facebook and Twitter.

One of Google’s social networking successes is YouTube, where users are able to subscribe/follow, favorite videos, respond, and comment. However, Google has also suffered its fair share in acquisitions, evidenced with its recent fallout with Yelp.

Google’s has recently approached social media marketing gurus Chris Messina, Will Norris, and Joseph Smarr to be a part of their social media team. Even though one of Google’s main focus for 2010 is social media, it may be quite the difficult feat since social media is constantly and rapidly changing. Priorities are constantly shifting and new companies, like Foursquare, are becoming wildly popular. “Although Google has tried to venture into social media, there hasn’t been much success," says Smarr. "Social media can’t be conquered by building supercomputer, but it requires innovations, nurturing, culture, and brand.”

As we’ve mentioned in the past, Google’s shift in incorporating real-time/latest tweets and posts from social networking sites like Facebook are adhering to the growth of social media on the web.

A former Google employee states, “The challenge with Google is that it isn’t in [its engineers’] DNA. It’s not that they don’t care about [social networking]; they don’t even see it. It’s almost invisible to them because their world view is so analytical and so computational.” If Google hopes to take on this challenge and overcome the social media requirements, they will need to invest time, commitment, and resources, as they’ve already done with their newly employed social media team, to juggle all that social media currently and will have in the future.

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Written by Chris C.