How 2018 Google attacks Social
While everybody is stunned and distracted by Google Duplex and how they dare to emulate a human being, Google also does other very interesting things with AI, again.
Google Maps is basically becoming a better, more intelligent Yelp with a personal “Match Score” & voting on places with your friends. Location Sharing was already merged in Google Maps.
Google Photos is adding new Smart Editing features that make contextual suggestions. And other apps can integrate Google Photos ”Slices”. The big news regarding Social was already in #IO2017 with Suggested Sharing. Having experienced the ease of use of this feature myself, I bet the sharing statistics went through the roof.
This all fits a theme: Google+ as the blatant copy of Facebook is yesteryear’s strategy, now Social is built into the specific apps, leveraging the different moats Google has created through data. The need for a Social Network-layer to share stuff is going away. Don’t forget: Your social graph is already in Google thanks to Gmail.
To back up a little, there is not one, there are many different social spheres online:
- the public ones (for example Twitter),
- the large ones (Facebook with an average number of 338 friends),
- the small ones (WhatsApp groups of 3 to maybe 15 people),
- the personal ones (WhatsApp with direct 1:1 chat)
The smaller you go, the more intimate and therefore potentially more important is the content.
While Google messed up 1:1 famously and won’t be able to compete with Facebook with its entreched network effects in many-to-many social contexts, here they are going after the small-sized groups.
Facebook was very aware that Social Networks build around certain features could thrive in community building and become a threat. But this time they can’t buy themselves the Location- or Photo-centered network. Google is the one company that knows even more about your interests and connections than Facebook, and now they found a suitable attack vector on Social. Zuck, forget your issues with Snap, this could become bigger.
