Andrew Wayman

“…We are developing tools to make “any app, any site, any friends” a reality.”

The Social Web Blog is focused on readers who “interested or involved” in making the web more social. It is Google’s 80th official blog and with it, they aim to capture the interest of individuals, founders, website owners and anyone who is interested in developing a community online.

They aim to keep readers better informed about Google’s social initiatives such as Google Friend Connect as well as keep their eyes open to readers ideas of how to make the web a more social place.

So far, Google has stumbled in motivating a developer community around its social products. Google Friend Connect lacks adoption and OpenSocial hasn’t pushed the envelope, but rather enabled a kind of application arbitrage, where the money making apps are ported to MySpace.

The launch of the new blog seems to signify more announcements coming out of Google Friend Connect as well as an effort to build a long needed community hub.

Google has faced a some skepticism and a lack of inspiration within the developer community. Facebook has simply presented a better package, better case studies, and a clearer vision. That’s a lot to overcome, but blogging is a step in the right direction.

From Google:

“We are launching this blog for anyone interested or involved in helping to make the web more social. Whether you own a site and want to add social features to increase community engagement, or you’re developing a great social application, this blog is for you.

We will write about social initiatives within Google, such as Google Friend Connect, as well as community efforts like OpenSocial. We plan to share some success stories, present tips and tricks, provide updates when there are new developments, and much more.”

-Andrew Wayman

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

Tags: clearer vision, community efforts, community engagement, community hub, developer community, developing tools, facebook, Friend Connect, google, Google Blog, new developments, openid, opensocial, skepticism, social application, social features, social initiatives, social web, step in the right direction, tips and tricks, web blog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 7:24 pm and is filed under News, Web, social web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.