Google's social media platform

Google's social media platform is so obvious it took me two months to see it.

The center of Goggle's monster social media contender is the profile page. Here's mine. It has a unique personalized URL, www.google.com/profiles/tomwfox. Parts are public and other parts are totally or partially private, as selected.

Compared to Facebook, The Google profile page "About me" and "Contact info" present the same type of information as does Facebook's Info Page. The Google profile page "About me" is invariably public it seems, but the "Contact info" is not public. You specify which people or groups of contacts can see it. The Google profile page "Buzz" tab is the functional equivalent to the Facebook Wall. Although I haven't looked at it closely, it seems that Google's Latitude competes with Facebook's newly announced social local mobile feature.

Google's continuing integration of Blogger, Picasa (photo hosting), Google Reader (Feed reader and sharing), and other platforms already easily matches the capabilities of Facebook, but just constructed out of previously independent parts. Facebook is more like a big lump compared to Google's structural and functional integration.

It just keeps getting better.

Google's stealth social media strategy

Google is assembling the parts of an integrated social media system that will ultimately dwarf any other (read Facebook), through sheer grinding persistence backed by a bazillion dollars. As far as I've noticed, they are doing it very quietly.

My public Google profile is my main piece of evidence: http://bit.ly/foxbuz

I've had a Google profile for years, and for years it was a great big nothing. Previously, a Google profile consisted of a photo and a name, and not a thing more than that. It was even more lame than my Yahoo! profile page.

These days, I've recently noticed, my Google profile page has grown legs. Not only can I display biographical information on my profile page, and LINKS!, I've also answered the question: "What the hell is Google Buzz good for?" My Google Buzz entries are now also a part of my Google profile, as you can see if you look. Google Buzz is still part of and controlled through the Google Gmail web interface, which is for personal contacts only. My Google Buzz is now echoed publicly on my profile page.