It’s a busy Sunday evening - first the news on Yahoo Mosh, and now news that Google is working on its own next generation social networking service called Socialstream, possibly to take the spotlight away from the ailing Orkut.
Yahoo Mosh
We don’t know much yet, other than the project exists, it will be launched at mosh.yahoo.com and is being called a “new cool social network product” within Yahoo. No screen shots are available yet. See our earlier post for more.
Google Socialstream
Google Operating System is reporting that Google is sponsoring a project at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute to “rethink and reinvent online social networking.” The project is called Socialstream. Click on the image for a larger view.
The project goal is to “create a system for users to seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks.” More information is available deeper in the site:
Socialstream emphasizes improving social connections by making it more efficient to communicate with, share with, and view the social content of all the people in a user’s online social network. Socialstream provides a compelling user experience because it aggregates content across many different networks so a user has a single location to discover new content and communicate. The goal of Socialstream is to present social information in a way that ties it to the person who posted the information, and not the site from which it came.
The feature set and use cases suggest this will be more of an aggregator of existing social networking sites and features. There is absolutely no indication of whether or not this will be productized and launched at this time.
This video gives a good overview of the interface and features:
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First comment, read after. Thanks.
oh god enough with the social networks.
Mike, there’s a significant difference between ’scenarios’ and ‘use cases’ where the former describes in general terms the action taking place while the latter spells out the step-by-step user interactions with the system.
In fact, the link you provided to Carnegi Mellon aren’t even scenarios but more like ‘personas’ describing the differnt types of users and their behaviour.
CM supposed to have a good HCI program but they seem to have their nomenclature mixed up…
Carnegie Mellon University have the best search engine developers: Blacks, Muslims, Asians, Whites, Latino, Mexicans, Russians, etc.
Yeap, I’m huge fan of Carnegie Mellon University students. I wanted to go that school. But, I have C average in my old failing college…
I have very good search engine too. I’m too old to go back to college.
Yeeahh .. it does look like an “Social Network” aggregator
…. I think people in Google always put 90% of their effort to think in a more technical manner ( making the application client rich , performance , AJAX , script , streaming , RSS , aggregation etc. ) - than think of a new good and intresting business logic in the site , which would make any man entertained …. ( Am a fan of Google 
.. and I marvel at their technical features in thier products ) ….. But I personnally think they should also concentrate on the softer side .. 
Interesting but may not be viable or feasible
Aggregation of services/data requires permission from the service vendor. It is like starting new search service based Google search results without Google permission.
IMHO deep integration of social relationships inside data or applications is what you will see. Large vendors like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft who have large user base but have no social networks speak off but has decent portfolio of applications can deliver on integrating social networking into applications.
Interesting but may not be viable or feasible
Aggregation of services/data requires permission from the service vendor. It is like starting new search service based on Google search results without Google permission.
IMHO deep integration of social relationships inside data or applications is what you will see. Large vendors like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft who have large user base but have no social networks to speak off but have decent portfolio of applications, can deliver an integrated social networking experience into applications.
A couple of interesting things– one is that Google is back to having a new name to maintain, something they said was a real pain with Froogle. I know it’s not a real product yet and maybe never will be, but still.
Second– Michael slid “productized” right into that write-up like it was nothing. Now that’s interesting.
Aggregation of social networks is where this space is heading because it’s better value for the end user. The social network silos are made from social relationships that belong to people and content that is user generated. The walls are coming down and the data will be open one way or another. Now who’s going to make the best tools and experiences across networks and devices?
The google one has been done before and failed by just a few companies!!!!
Yeah bring it on! We sure need more of those… S-(
smart, i need to see an interface though. My only rebutle, do I really need to check my Myspace, Facebook and LinkedIn on the same site?
By the way, I’m selling a mystery item on my daily deal site tonight, 1daysports.com. Check it out if you’d like.
-jason
What Google has to consider is that unless their interface is significantly better to a point where it is only logical to stop using Facebook, LinkedIn, etc… separately, this won’t work…
the issue is that the Facebook interface, for example, is very intuitive. I don’t know how much more you can improve on that…
Aydin.
“…ailing orkut”
+40 million users. Is it that bad????
Ahhh, yes, they are from poor countries, Brazil, India…etc. (mostly)
they do not generate enough buzz, money, etc [sic].
How different is an Ad click from an 1st world country from a 3rd one?
Do they have different rates for Ad clicks?
Glad to hear Yahoo’s also working this angle. I’m glad to see focus on *aggregating* rather than on *content* because I think we have enough tools to create content now and what I want to see are very easy ways to spread content to the logical places without having to join/login/hassle with dozens of networks.
“How different is an Ad click from an 1st world country from a 3rd one?
Do they have different rates for Ad clicks?”
Yes, advertisers want users who will buy their product. Unfortunately, that means traffic from poorer countries are less valuable.
I have a feeling Google and Yahoo won’t be as successful as one would think, and that most of this is probably more hype. Realistically, what was the last awesome project that either company released (developed in house) that made a huge dent in its market? I can think of Gmail…but thats about it!?
http://www.profilelinker.com among others have already been working on this.
i counldt help but notice virb having a feel of flickr, and causing me to think it was somehow tied to yahoo. i take it its not?
It will be fun to watch these two play catch up.
Finally, Yahoo became smart (strange?).
Well the concept is simple. They own the market. Whatever they might come up with would make a global buzz even if it’s not that good.
@Cax: I love you. The udder transparency of today’s network cows and their regurgitated single minded goals will be their undoing. Eyeballs, clicks, lock-in, spam, context sensitive advertising enemas, cpm, garbage.
another social network then… hope it’s good
A master’s project sponsored by Google does not make it a Google Product.
The project can also be seen at http://socialstream.net/project/ and interestingly, the domain name socialstream.net is registered to Blacktree, Inc (the quicksilver guys). Whole thing is just way too murky.
BTW, Google is also sponsoring a pizza event; hope they aren’t planning to open a Pizzeria some time soon. It would be right up their alley; it would be a pizza “pie”, and they can call it gizza, a pizza with gazillion toppings.
Ack. Just what the web needs - more social networking sites.
I’m slightly confused as to why either Google or Yahoo would even bother - they’ve both tried and failed at the social networking thing in the past (Orkut / 360).
But the really weird thing is both their existing social sites have failed because they’ve failed to put resources into them and develop them.
I don’t know about Mosh, but I can totally see Socialstream catching up with other staple social networks actually.
port 3001?
can you say “rails”?
http://www.meecard.com will be launching soon and they will be providing a similar service (although initially focused on combining and exposing your web accounts rather than managing from a single point)
I’m expecting nothing more than a refurbished version of Orkut. And Yahoo will keep it’s culture of making things looks really posh, but unusable at the same time.
Please! No more Social Networks. Why not try to improve the existing ones?
That chick on the demo made me want to throw up.
“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate. “
Why not beat the heck out of social networking and allow people to share everything, their laundry, their garage etc.
Vijay
Maybe that social networks need a standard, a bit like RSS.
Well, if the first generation can be improved, I say go for it. I’m still scratching my head wondering why folks invest so much time on their social spaces as opposed to their own site or blog. I realize skill levels vary, but really, it’s very simply to start a blog these days, so why not at least invest time into something that might pay you back for the time you spend on it?
Why invest YOUR time to build content, page views and ad impressions for someone else?
…and if my logic holds water, and gains traction over time, could it spell doom and gloom for the whole social vertical? I mean, if everyone woke up tomorrow and suddenly just stopped posting in social spaces and started with their own blogs, what would happen?
Could this even ever happen?
Vijay - your comment sounds like a joke, but this is actually what we are trying to do in a way with our new company, iRent2u.com - check it out.
As for the mashed-up social networking solution from Google. The concept has incredible potential, but this will be extremely difficult to implement well.
I am starting to lose a bit of faith in Google after so many incomplete efforts. I think Google makes great products, but can’t always execute what needs to be done to make it a market leader. One main thing they are missing is a real marketing process. Their determination to do zero marketing relegates their product only to those who try it out on their own.
But what does Google really care. They have Google, and maps, and with those two apps they will rein for a long time to come. Can you say “Cash Cow?”
Online marketing guy -
Blogs and social networks are totally different. Try using one a bit and you will understand. Not everyone is trying to market themselves. Most just want to connect with friends.
Blogs are a broadcast medium. Social networks are focused more on interaction. Totally different.
I see things like this, and I kind of can’t help but think that everybody’s way - way - overthinking Web 2.0.
Well it seems really interesting!!!
with google and Yahoo competing it will be done right;
- they both will throw money at it. This is bad news for any startup trying to do it themselves -
I always wondered how google can come up with such a mediocre product like orkut. mediocre because there were absolutely no new features and it still had the same drab theme from its inception. So this product isn’t quite a surprise because whenever you look at orkut, you feel this isn’t quite google enough!
Well, its going to be good to see what they come up with.
the interface looks like the social network aggregator http://www.spokeo.com
Facebook needs to acquire and integrate with their own browser soon… maybe Opera? It has to be Web and mobile. Social Networking + Browser = domination. Socialstream + Safari = bu-bye
socialstream has impressive UI - though I am not sure how the timeline can scale if the user has a lot of friends (think 100+).
Also, they seem to have copied MIT’s CS group’s Timeline project UI - http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/. The emphasis seems to be more on feeds/updates than on the profile.
We need to wait and see until the project completes …..
Not sure if this means anything, but take a look at the WS_FTP log file…
http://www2.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/M-.....WS_FTP.LOG
It doesn’t seem like anything has been upload or modified in almost a full year…either they moved dev to another more secure location or perhaps this project is no longer in production.
Just pointing it out is all, I have no facts.
That headline scared me… I really want to see what they come up with, but after watching the video it looks like we at ClutterMe.com are still working on some stuff they’re not. Phew!
I’m surprised at how slow the Socialstream demo is though.
Socialisation is coming…
I can’t wait for Windows Live Events!
“There is absolutely no indication of whether or not this will be productized and launched at this time.”
Next time try to use a word that isn’t bull shit. Why not “…whether or not this product will be launched.”
Productized? Did you find that when someone barfed up his alphabet cereal?
Google is turning from good to evil .
a simple search engine to content stealers.
when was the last time google built a product ..? google checkout ?
how many flavors of search products do they offer … web/images/video/news/books/..etc. ? can they develop any thing other than search …
How many companies it acquires every week ? Google is killing innovation. they acquire the bright ideas and dump them.