Google is trying to push more media sharing and status update features into Gmail as soon as this week, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Gmail users would be able to see a stream of status updates from friends as well as photos and videos shared through Picasa and YouTube.
Although Facebook has come to dominate the social networking space with 400 million users, Gmail contacts represent a formidable latent social network with hundreds or thousands of e-mails and chats between friends. While Facebook could support weak links in your broader social network because it encourages lightweight social actions like comments and “likes”, Gmail could strengthen your closest online relationships because it supports longer-form e-mails and one-to-one private communication.
The problem is that Google has never executed social well. Orkut, its early social networking contender built by Orkut Büyükkökten, languished behind MySpace and Facebook and is now defending its last bastion in Brazil.
June 5th: The AI Audit in NYC
Join us next week in NYC to engage with top executive leaders, delving into strategies for auditing AI models to ensure fairness, optimal performance, and ethical compliance across diverse organizations. Secure your attendance for this exclusive invite-only event.
The company has also launched other social products like Google Friend Connect and Latitude, but they haven’t seen quite the same traction as Facebook Connect and independent location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare. (Google Friend Connect technically has more integrated sites than Facebook Connect, but the vast majority of them are from Google Blogger. Both ‘Connect’ services let you use the same log-in and password for different online services and endeavor to add a layer of social functionality across the web.)
Google also unveiled social search last fall, which lets you see search results shared or published by friends. But the contact importer is a bit unwieldy and many Gmail users don’t have completely public content to share in search results.
It’s the right move, but color us skeptical until we see how it’s designed.
