GMail - New Social Network

Original author: Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
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What is the true size of your social graph? If you ask this from Google, then the answer is in your contacts database.

Alex Chitu, on his Google Operating System blog , says he discovered code indicating Google’s intention to automatically send status updates from your chat and contact database to GMail. One of the next steps towards creating a de facto social network.


The details of what, where exactly and in what form will appear are still approximate, but as Chitu said: “most likely GMail will receive information on the latest important events in your contacts from various Google services.” Similar functionality, he noted, is already available in Picasa, Orkut, and Google Reader.

As Matthew Ingram says- "Google brings together all the threads of its social network." What was going to happen is what I learned earlier from an insider (although he told me that this would be part of the Maka-Maka / OpenSocial project). And all this, in fact, is exactly what I expected from Google.

At the same time, I do not share the fears of some that all this will eventually turn into another annoying bunch of spam. But at the same time, I understand that the road to social Google will be filled with difficulties and mistakes.

E-mail is already a very well-developed tool, although we are still waiting for an improvement in the situation with phishing and spam ( from the author: I encountered great difficulties in translating this proposal. I will be glad to any improvements) By adding new features to the system, they also add features to turn the spam-free GMail service into something similar to MySpace overloaded with spam (do you want to easily display a property ad on thousands of user screens? Constantly upload pictures to Picasa for endless status updates).

I am sure that the long delay from the moment when I first heard about this initiative until the moment when there was information about a possible launch of the service suggests that the creators are really aware of potential problems. But my prediction is that if they are not careful enough, then we will see at least two or three mini- fiascoes, privacy levels in Google Reader , and one big similar to spam on Facebook .

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