Comments on: Google Profiles, namespace lock-in & social search

By: Ben Foster

Ben Foster — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:05:36 +0000

It’s too bad that Twitter didn’t think of reserving all the names that might one day be valuable to sell them off. Many of the Fortune 25 companies including Exxon, GE, GM, HP, and CVS aren’t able to use their corporate names as their own account.

I’m interested to see how Facebook handles multiple people with a claim to the same name. Will it be an auction or first-dibs? I hope they do some sort of analysis for people with the same names to see who posts the most/best content on Facebook and gives it to that user.

By: Jed Sundwall

Jed Sundwall — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:41:23 +0000

Thanks for posting this. I'm a big fan of Google's profiles, and I'm certain that there's someone at Google who knows enough graph theory to add some smart guessing to a logged-in profile search.

And re: Google "not getting social," I think they might "not get it like a fox." I'm impressed by their choice to use my chat list as a potential list of my "friends" when setting my profile's settings. It turns out I was building a useful shortlist of contacts when deciding who I want to IM with. Google Reader won my heart because of its social elements. I'm willing to put up with some major shortcomings from Google Docs because it's social software.

I predict we'll start seeing our friends' profile pics popping up on SERPs before too long. Search for "restaurants in San Diego" and you might find a blog in the results accompanied by a note saying "your friend Jed subscribes to this blog in Google Reader."

By: JJ Halans

JJ Halans — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:41:15 +0000

The problem I have is that your Google Profile name is your gmail address. They have an option for people to contact you without giving out your email address, but if you use the "humanized" url format, that is your gmail address. How are they going to handle bots scraping these profiles for gmail addresses? I would rather have my real name (which isn't my gmail address necessary) or another nickname as profile name, while the profile itself would still show my real name.

By: Ainslie

Ainslie — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:51:13 +0000

Interesting observations. Lots of food for thought.

@AAinslie

By: nebben

nebben — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:39:11 +0000

I think Google is trying to be your personal storefront. I wrote about that here, http://societrends.com/2009/04/16/google-profiles-may-become-your-storefront/.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:18:03 +0000

i think you need to take into account an additional dimension: how famous are you?

a) famous. make it like linus torvalds, let other people mirror your stuff. you don’t need to ask them as they’ll start doing it anyway. problem solved, the namespace gets less of a problem.

b) not (yet) famous. you need to do your own mirroring. here, using an open p2p system might be the most persistent, most stable and most independent solution.

as most people will start at b), using an open, standardized, company- and country-independent p2p network will likely be the key.

By: Danny Ayers

Danny Ayers — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:36:29 +0000

Good points, and as far as the near-term is concerned, I agree totally. But longer term I'd suggest that the advantage for a service provider with majority market share will generally diminish. Facebook and Google both display a fairly walled garden/data silo kind of mentality, but in the globally connected space The Rest of the World will always be bigger. With that in mind, services which make the borders between namespaces transparent/invisible are likely to gain more (new) market share over time through net natural selection. Re. having your own NS - yes, definitely (though whether this will ever become a practical option for *everyone* is another matter). See also Steve Pemberton's take.

By: Ben Clemens

Ben Clemens — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:34:10 +0000

I very much like Google’s profile pages and would even trust them as an aggregator of my details from different social networks, and having one as a basic openid would be wonderful! BUT the email-address giveaway is a show-stopper for me. I should be able to generate a keyphrase or use a nickname! A URL identifier is great and should be public and easily found, but I shouldn’t have to expose personal information to have one.

By: David Recordon

David Recordon — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:45:23 +0000

I think one of the assumptions that Facebook is making is that the majority of people searching will already be logged in.

By: Julien Genestoux

Julien Genestoux — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:12:14 +0000

Agree with Tom, Google Profile would make a great OpenId to start!

Also, I haven’t had enough time to check, that would be just awesome that the urls we enter there are “checked” so that we have a true identity in terms of “pages”.

I agree I can’t be describe with one page (or one url), but I could certainly be described by a “network” of pages linked together (to “certify” they’re related)… Ideally, by just entering one of these urls anywhere, then, you could have access to all my online identities accross services!