Google going social?

Posted in the Wall Street Journal today: Google to announce some social feature linked to Gmail allowing users to share media and even update statuses? The least you can say they don't create this irritating hype announcing something ages beforehand.

On the other hand: I don't mind creating status updates for my Facebook account on a (nearly) daily basis but do I want to see status updates on everything I do? Absolutely not.

The reason FB has remained this much fun is because most of the status updates I see in my friends' circle are witty, funny, serious, provocative ... no day-to-day 'i'm having coffee now and after that I will start doing the dishes' kinda stuff. But on my Google mail? And what is Google going to do with that? Run text analysis, sentiment analysis, semantic analysis and get me analyzed to bits?

I don't think so.

Life made simple ...

... by using a simple idea. How do you visualize 250 million people on Facebook? OK, that's a lot of people, zillions, 23 times the size of the Belgian population, 1/24th of the world population, ...You can also just make a cute little movie. With thanks to jevedebe.

Proud owner of a bee poken thx to BGGD

Went to the Antwerp edition of the BGGD yesterday evening (a lot of blokes for a gurrrrllll event) and found a cute poken in my goodiebag, courtesy www.ibbt.be ... how long will it take before I run into someone who actually has one I want to high five with? I'm afraid I'll be high-fivin' with someone I don't know, just to be able to :-) But a great gift anyway and one that will probably amaze my very high tech guys @ work. Cool! And thank you, BGGD & IBBT.

fake or real?

When a Facebook monolith announces it's returning to its former terms & conditions due to the strong reaction of the community to the new ones ... is that the strength of the social networking community making a point or just a clever marketing trick? Why am I not as impressed as I should be? Or just being too cynical?

En waarom zou het nu wél lukken?

De Tech blog van de FT meldt dat Facebook een top Google madam heeft binnengehaald om nu eindelijk ook een keer te proberen geld te verdienen met dat ding. Facebook heeft een paar maanden terug ook al een keer geprobeerd om een systeem van social ads op te zetten en kreeg prompt een user-revolt over zich heen. Of deze Sheryl Sandberg meer kans op slagen heeft, zal nog moeten blijken. Pleit in haar voordeel dat ze veel meer ervaring heeft om te proberen het potentieel dat er ligt, ook echt te valoriseren.