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July 06, 2011

Google+ vs. Facebook - 'If You Could See Me Now'

By Peter Bernstein, Senior Editor

If you thought you were suffering from information overload before, it is time to take a valium and chill out. The worst or best -- depending on your perspective -- is yet to come. In short order in the last few days we have had Google’s introduction of Google+. Then on July 6, over 55,000 viewers watched Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s (News - Alert) (News - Alert) much anticipated “big” announcement about the introduction of Group Chat. It features new design functionality for ease of use of Chat, and one-click single user to single user video calling from Chat over Skype (soon to be part of Microsoft).



For a great overview of the Facebook announcement, I highly recommend TMCnet Web Editor Juliana Kenny’s fine coverage. Shifting through the huge amount of detritus already left on Internet in the wake of these announcements, it is striking how much attention was given to comparative advantages of one social networking formulation versus the other (which will be fleeting at best), and the intensity of the criticism for things still missing (group video and availability of video chat on mobile devices for Facebook and the privacy challenges for users of Google (News - Alert)+). To be honest, I am more interested in what these portend for the future.

For instance, the Zuckerberg comments that resonated with me were from his introductory narrative. He and his colleagues threw out a few concepts and factoids that are sure to be repeated in the coming months as Facebook continues what he called, “the beginning of announcement season.” They were:

First, he stated that the last five years were about growing the number of users and building the Facebook “social infrastructure” on which Facebook, but mostly others, would be able to create new applications and generate value-added for the entire ecosystem.

Second, he emphasized being at a “social networking inflection point,” as a result of what he sees as the near completion of the infrastructure build-out. This should give service providers pause at best and nightmares at worst, even if he is off a little in his projections.  He makes the case that exponential growth similar to that of Moore’s Law in silicon breakthroughs (Metcalfe’s Law about the value of network connections was a better analogy), can now be achieved and sustained. “The Law of Sharing,” (expressed as y=2x ) is hard at work.

Third, he gave a full-throated endorsement of the need to have open sourced platforms so as not to constrain ingenuity and opportunity in the social network infrastructure. Based on The Law of Sharing, he said this would translate into a compounded doubling over the next few years in the number of items each individual shared.

In other words, a virtuous circle would be created. New apps and ease of use would increase the desirability of sharing more. This means more on a broad scale as well as more groups that will be increasingly customized and more ad hoc groups as well. Throw on top of this the growth in traffic due purely to an increase in the number of people not just connected but connected via smartphones and tablets, increasing the number of interactions. And contemplate what accommodating video in particular will mean. Neither Facebook nor Skype (News - Alert) could provide a number as to the overlap of their users, but it was pointed out that 50% of today’s Skype traffic is video. What this adds up to is that business models are going to have to be revolutionized throughout the ecosystem to support this growth.  

On the Google side of the house, a visit to Google+ has a déjà vu quality. It is not unlike the one you get from listening to the description of Facebook video calling from their chat over Skype — something that can be done today using the CChat function from Gmail and which is not that dissimilar from the historic way of making video calls over the Internet via Skype, MS Messenger, AOL and others for years. Google Hangouts, however, breaks new ground on a few key fronts:

  • Unlike Facebook Video Chat, it supports group and not point-to-point video
  • Unlike Skype group chat which is lightly used, nobody needs to have the $4.49/month premium to implement group video calls

Again, this must be viewed not through the prism of what is, but rather where this is heading. Facebook is on a path dominated by the consumer aspects of social networking, which will or will not creep into Enterprises on the kindness of others. Say what you will about the deficiencies of Google Docs as an Office killer, the reality is, between Chrome, Android, and other key parts of the growing Google portfolio, it has its eyes set on the Enterprise as well as the mass market.  They want to be the digital dashboard and provide content and context mediation for all of our virtual personae, regardless of what mode we are in, or what place on what device.

This is why the FTC (News - Alert) is so interested in possible Google anticompetitive behavior and leveraging of SEARCH. It is also why you see speculation, denied by everyone so maybe it is true, about Google bidding for Hulu.  Google Hangouts can be seen as either a Camel’s nose under the tent or another arrow in the quiver in terms of Chrome plating Enterprise browsers and enticing uses of other products, and cross-fertilizing user trust in either the consumer or Enterprise space.  The real target is Microsoft. Facebook is an annoying interloper for the war being waged on a much broader front.

This is why Zuckerberg was very careful to emphasize his long and close relationship with the folks in Redmond. How all of this ends up fitting into things like IPOs, anti-trust actions, strategic acquisitions, shifting allegiances and alliances, and whose ox gets gored as traffic explodes on service provider networks, etc., is anyone’s guess.

So while the news of the week from Google and Facebook may not have been nearly as big as the hype or the commotion on the Internet, it certainly sets up all of us for interesting times ahead. Zuckerberg got one thing right. We are at an inflection point, and it is much larger than the one he foresees concerning social networking. This is not about a short-term contest as to “if you could see me now.” Stay tuned.


Peter Bernstein is a technology industry veteran, having worked in multiple capacities with several of the industry's biggest brands, including Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Telcordia, HP, Siemens (News - Alert), Nortel, France Telecom, and others, and having served on the Advisory Boards of 15 technology startups. To read more of Peter's work, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves
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