Saturday, October 20, 2007

Social Networking wars: Facebook v. Google - Oct. 16, 2007

Fortune article -- the print version is titled "Look Who's Worried Now"; the web version is titled "Facebook's got Google running scared."  The closing paragraphs: 

Google's effort, I'm told, is being led by Joe Kraus, the founder of Excite. Though he is as Web 2.0 savvy as they come, I think Google's plan may be too little too late. Everyone these days is opening up his network - even MySpace.

Besides, there's no compelling reason for users to leave Facebook now. The developers will stay as long as they can reach a mass audience there. Google's trying to fix something that isn't broken - just as Microsoft has been doing for years with search and IBM tried to do with operating systems for PCs. Maybe Google should stick to organizing the world's information, and let this little mouse roar.

The Joe Kraus reference is the closest to a JotSpot tangent I've seen in many months.  It has now been almost a year since Google acquired JotSpot (of which Kraus was co-founder and CEO), and it seems to have disappeared without a trace.

Social Networking wars: Facebook v. Google - Oct. 16, 2007

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