Thursday, 23 September 2010 01:01
Zuckerberg: Social Is Not A Layer You Add (*Cough* Google *Cough*)
Earlier this afternoon, we posted our most recent interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The talk is full of gems of information, such as Facebook’s thoughts about social phones. But a more general statement Zuckerberg made about socialness is also very interesting. Because he seems to be taking a direct shot at Google.
“Even the companies that are starting to come around to thinking, ‘oh maybe we should do some social stuff’’, I still think a lot of them are only thinking about it on a surface layer,” Zuckerberg says. “It’s like ‘OK, I have my product, maybe I’ll add two or three social features and we’ll check that box’,” he continues. “That’s not what social is.“
“You have to design it in from the ground up,” is how Zuckerberg sees it. He cites Zynga and Quora as two companies doing this correctly. “They’ve designed their whole product around the idea that your friends will be here with you,” he says.
One company he doesn’t mention as doing this correctly is Google. In fact, the entire part about adding social as a layer seems to be a shot at them. Recent comments by Google CEO Eric Schmidt directly state that Google’s forthcoming social strategy will be about adding a social layer to existing products. “Google Me is not a product, it’s a social layer across all products,” Schmidt said at Google’s Zeitgeist event a couple weeks ago.
So it looks like Facebook and Google are going to agree to disagree on the concept of social as a layer versus social as a foundation. So far, clearly, Facebook is winning this argument.
Here’s the key blurb from Zuckerberg in context:
One thing that I think is really important — that I think is context for this, is that I generally think that most other companies now are undervaluing how important social integration is. Right, so even the companies that are starting to come around to thinking, ‘oh maybe we should do some social stuff’, I still think a lot of them are only thinking about it on a surface layer, where it’s like “OK, I have my product, maybe I’ll add two or three social features and we’ll check that box”. That’s not what social is. Social is. You have to design it in from the ground up. These experiences like what Zynga is doing or what a company like Quora is doing, I think that they have just a really good social integration. They’ve designed their whole product around the idea that your friends will be here with you. Everyone has a real identity for themselves. And those are fundamental building blocks. Now, I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get the mobile environments that you see today to a state where you can build really robust social applications on top of it. So that’s the biggest driving force for us — to try to work with these folks and see how deep we can get on our own to make sure that we can build that plumbing. Our goal is to make it exist.
That last bit seems to imply Facebook’s work on diving deep within Android to make it fundamentally more social. Thanks to the open nature of that platform, Facebook can do that. Too bad Google itself isn’t open.
[photo: flickr/steve damron]
CrunchBase InformationFacebookGoogleInformation provided by CrunchBase
0
0
1
1
2
2
3
3
4
4
5
5
6
6
7
7Authors: MG Siegler
Read 4323 times
Published in
News Technologique-Tech News
Last WebBuzz
-
WebBuzz du 24/11/2017: Pérou décoller comme superman-Peru Reverse bungee aka Superman Jump
Read 37590 times
-
WebBuzz du 22/11/2017: Une Femme Saoudienne fait du surf dans les rues-Saudi girl Car Surfing after heavy rains and flood in Saudi Arabia
Read 37957 times
-
WebBuzz du 20/11/2017: Maxi crach au grand prix GT à Macau-Huge pile up Crash 2017 Macau Grand Prix FIA GT World Cup
Read 32862 times
-
WebBuzz du 17/11/2017: Boston Dynamics fait le cirque avec ses robots-BD prepare to build a circus with his robots
Read 35600 times
-
WebBuzz du 16/11/2017: Une illusion d'optique féminine-a feminine optical illusion
Read 33683 times
-
WebBuzz du 14/11/2017: Roumanie un bus de police évite un tram de justesse-Close call between a tram and police's bus
Read 30314 times
-
WebBuzz du 13/11/2017: Arrivée fracassante d'un bateau sur les docks de San Diego-Whale Watching Boat Crashing Into San Diego Dock
Read 28587 times
-
WebBuzz du 08/11/2017: Créer des flammes de toutes les couleurs-How to make colourful flames
Read 29450 times
-
WebBuzz du 07/11/2017: Echec test du système de détection des piètons de la Volvo S60-Volvo S60 Pedestrian Detection System Test failed
Read 30657 times
-
WebBuzz du 03/11/2017: Slacker dans la forêt-slackline in the forest
Read 33108 times
accident
Amazing
animal
animals
animaux
art
avec
baby
car
Cat
chat
chien
comment
Crazy
Cute
dans
Dog
droles
Echec
fail
fait
From
funny
how
jump
musique
nature
new
people
plus
pour
route
russia
russie
saut
sauvage
Sport
stupid
sur
Technique
The
usa
vehicules
video
video du jour
videos
voiture
webbuzz
wild
with