Don’t bet that Google Me won’t succeed in social media

Bloggers, including this one obviously, are abuzz about Google Me, the Facebook-killer-wannabe rumored to be under development in the Googleplex.

Of course, the naysayers are pointing out that Google has flopped with two ballyhooed social tools in the past year: Wave, which was launched with lots of hype and anticipation, and Buzz, which snuck up on the market, generated a lot of brief (yeah) buzz, then virtually vanished from the social conversation.

I kind of enjoyed Wave and saw considerable potential in it. But most of the Waves I rode turned fairly quickly into conversations about how Wave worked and how we might use it. Continuing curiosity about a product is certainly not a sustainable business model.

Wave had some flaws, but they were less annoying than the frequent and continuing appearances of Twitter’s Fail Whale, and Twitter is thriving despite the whale. And when Wave worked, it was exciting. I participated in a cool group interview that Vadim Lavrusik used for a few Mashable posts. And, more notably, the Seattle Times used Wave in its Pulitzer-winning coverage of the manhunt for the suspect in the shootings of four Lakewood, Wash., police officers.

Wave may yet launch a comeback. But more important, Google probably learned some lessons (including how hype can backfire) from the experience.

Buzz was an almost immediate bust. My initial criticism was the posting of tweets in bunches a couple times a day, most of them several hours old. A social tool needs to be immediate. (They fixed that, but by the time they did, I had lost interest. I can’t remember the last time someone buzzed me.) And certainly that buzzt taught Google a lesson about privacy, trust and giving users control of how they use social tools. I’m transparent enough in my digital communication that the privacy flaws were not a huge issue for me. But Buzz never made itself useful or fun to me, and a social tool’s value proposition usually rests in one or both of those factors.

Twittown’s Facebook Blog says Google Me can’t possibly take on Facebook because a social tool needs critical mass to succeed, and everyone’s friends are already on Facebook:

If I have to choose between two social networks (let’s say, for the sake of argument, Google Me or Facebook), chances are slim that I’m going to choose to use a social network that none of my friends belong to.

That reasoning is flawed, though. No one has to choose between two social networks. I didn’t have to stop using Facebook or Twitter when Cliqset or Foursquare came along. I joined them because they were interesting, not because I chose them over something else. I don’t use Cliqset because my friends didn’t join. Lots of my friends did join Foursquare and I check in somewhere almost every day (and I probably use it more than Facebook, even though more friends are on Facebook). I didn’t even have to choose between Foursquare and Gowalla, which are similar location services, or Dopplr and TripIt, which are similar travel social tools. I joined them all and I used the ones that were most useful and fun to me (the number of friends wasn’t the only factor; I don’t  have a lot of friends on TripIt, but I use it every time I travel). And I have almost twice as many contacts on LinkedIn as I do Facebook friends, but I don’t use LinkedIn a lot.

Facebook didn’t muscle MySpace aside because people immediately chose between them. Lots of Facebook users already had a MySpace account with more friends there than on Facebook. So they used both for a while, giving Facebook time to grow. And eventually, people who had accounts on both started ignoring their MySpace accounts. Don’t bet that Google Me (or someone else) couldn’t do that someday to Facebook, which has dealt with privacy issues itself.

Here’s why I would not be so fast to predict doom for Google Me (Google hasn’t even confirmed the project’s existence, let alone the name, but it’s a great name): Google demonstrated its willingness to fail in the Wave and Buzz projects, and a willingness to fail is essential for success.

Also, Google has a wealth of experience and success in social media, beyond the hard lessons learned from Wave and Buzz.

Google search is based on social experience. While the search algorithms are secret, they clearly are based in large part on traffic and links. And what’s more social that popularity contests and attribution? (I should add I used Google several times in searching for links for this post and never searched past the first screen, so my selection of links was guided by social experience.)

I use Gmail every day to communicate with friends and family, gchat occasionally when a friend notices I’m logged in and share dozens of documents with colleagues, friends and family using Google Docs. I used Google translations when I was training in Siberia last year to post my handouts in Russian, and I use it to check the context when international blogs link to my blog.

And don’t forget that YouTube, one of the most successful social media platforms, is a Google property. (OK, they bought it, rather than launching it, but they have a lot of successful social media experience in the company.) Google also bought Aardvark, an intriguing social tool that I think has considerable potential. Orkut has not been a big social platform in the United States but is more successful in other countries.

Social media is not a zero-sum competition. The amount of time we spend with social tools has been growing rapidly as they grow more plentiful and more useful. I wouldn’t bet against Google succeeding again in social media.

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