(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
An article in TNW, “Google’s taking another crack at building a social network”, looks at Google’s latest efforts to launch a social network after it shut down Google+ in April.
This time round, the idea seems to be setting up local social networks, for the moment in New York with the domain .NYC called Shoelace to connect people with similar interests. For the moment it’s by invitation only, for smartphones using Android and iOS, not yet generally available in app stores, although the Android version is available in APK Mirror. Knowing Google, the idea will be financed by hyperlocal advertising. This is similar to what the company tried between 2011 and 2014 with a very low visibility project, Schemer, which has now been revived and adapted.
The most important thing to remember about launching a social network is managing the adoption phase. Any number of social networks have died because of biased adoption: a given group (of a country, language or other type) has prevented mass adoption or experienced unexpected practices that have restricted it. A social network has to pay much more attention to the dynamics of adoption and creation of its ecosystem than the initial functionalities it offers and if it wants to go global, to be able to control them and avoid ghettoization. Google’s previous problems with products such as Orkut or Google+ were not poor design or functionality, but to do with not managing their adoption. Facebook is interesting because it does not owe its initial popularity to its features, which were no different from other social networks at the time, but to a very controlled adoption process that highlighted an aspirational aspect.
Going hyperlocal, although potentially very interesting and Google undoubtedly has the credentials to put it into operation thanks to its knowledge of the market and geolocation initiatives such as Google Maps, is a tricky route to take. The possibilities of hyperlocal advertising are huge, but so are the possible complications derived from poor management, which in this case can transfer the problems and negative dynamics of a social network to your neighborhood or even to your front door. Managing something like this requires a very high level of responsibility and control.
For Google, the company that generated the social component on the web thanks to an algorithm based on classification and popularity, not having a social network is a major failure, and even more so if we bear in mind that Facebook has done a great deal of harm to the internet by not being managed properly. But over time, we have been able to verify many of the peculiarities of the social network environment and to learn a lot about adoption dynamics. Will Google be able to use this knowledge and start a social network, or will it repeat previous failures?
