Google’s previous attempts at social networking generally weren’t received well by users.  FriendConnect had major issues with browser coding, Orkut never really caught on in the U.S., and I think we all remember the Buzz privacy scare last year.  I have high hopes for Google Me – this could be Google’s chance to tie all of their various outlets into an effective central hub.

Google’s varied demographic also sets a solid foundation for building a social network that can appeal to a broad range of individuals.  Businessmen and businesswomen use services like Google Docs to organize important information, Google Calendar for scheduling, and AdWords for marketing purposes on a daily basis.  College students, moms, and celebrity bloggers often check their Gmail accounts, read the latest stories on Google News, see a video on YouTube, or learn something new on Google Health, and then discuss their findings on Blogger.  Google owns all of these elements and I believe that Google Me could effectively incorporate them under a single, central site.  Think of it as Ping.fm on steroids that incorporates Google sites instead of social networks.

In a recent article on BNET, Ben Popper illustrates this idea perfectly and makes a few predictions of his own:

For Google, Zynga’s games are an important piece of the social networking puzzle. The company will never be able to premier a product now that, standing alone, can hope to challenge Facebook. Instead Google seems to be working in reverse, establishing the individual pieces one at a time and tying them together later on. It’s already got photos, micro-blogging and location based services. The key will be pushing an integrated suite of these tools on platforms like Android and Google TV. If Zynga becomes built into these offerings on a base level, and prompts users to login with their Gmail accounts, it could go a long way towards helping the search giant construct its own version of the social graph.

If Ben is correct and Google is, in fact, reverse-engineering their own social media platform, then Google Me could stand a chance against Facebook.  CNN Tech reports that over 75 million users actively use Facebook’s Zynga games on a monthly basis.  If Zynga offers unique features to Google users, then I expect a large portion of Facebook users will go check them out immediately.  New games, along with integrated email, calendars, documents, chat, photos, and videos is an enticing opportunity for all Facebook users to try something new.  Whether or not Google will integrate Zynga into Google Me is still unconfirmed, but think of the opportunity that Google has to connect all of their services under a central social network.

That was all going swimmingly until little over a week ago.  Google released a service called Buzz, a new component for gmail that integrates facebook-like social networking functionality.  On the surface this idea is interesting and actually provides some of the functionality originally promised in Google Wave.  Unfortunately, Buzz has turned out to be a nightmare on every level.

First, it attempts to merge email and social networking – two things that a lot of users still view as mutually exclusive.  Email has grown to become a utilitarian tool – social networking is a mini version of the internet.  Folks use them to communicate in different ways.  Google took a finely tuned, 5-year old service (gmail) and bolted on an untested, totally new service with a totally different form and function.

Second, it was thrown at users automatically as an “opt-out” service, not an “opt-in” one.  Gmail users simply logged in one day and found this mess running.  You had to search for and then remove the service if you didn’t want it, not the other way around.

Third, and most important, Google took the long-established trust of Gmail users and trashed it by circumventing their privacy and publicly displaying information that was otherwise private or obscure.  As a result, Buzz is now on the Federal Trade Commission’s insidious-services-to-watch list and multiple class-action lawsuits have been filed against it.  All within the span of about a week and half.

all avoidable

My biggest problem with this, and the fundamental jist of this post, is that this ALL COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDABLE.  Google isn’t some little rag-tag “mom and pop” – it’s a major billion-dollar corporation.  Smart people work there.  Common sense should have easily made this a typical, successful release.

Even worse, Facebook has notoriously suffered major privacy snafus themselves, providing any competing business a case study in what NOT to do when rolling out a new feature.  Why did Google not pay attention?

who’s to blame?

Simply put, Google has become too big for it’s own good – too caught up in it’s success to consider the needs and behavior of the public.  Instead of listening to what their users need and creating products around it, they force-feed what they pompously think is best and throw privacy to the wind.  A recent interview with CEO Eric Schmidt proves as much.  Google engineers, who often are responsible for too much of a product roll-out, become more arrogant and blind to what users want.  They ask “why wouldn’t you like this?” after the fact instead of “how would you like this to work?”

And because they’re so big, they likely won’t change.  While Buzz is a failure, it hardly puts a dent in Google’s overall business.  The stock price may get dinged, legal defense will have to be paid for and egos will be bruised, but this event won’t sink the ship.

the point?

Even though Google won’t change, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn from their failures.  Small and medium businesses can’t afford such costly mistakes and rule #1 should ALWAYS apply: know your users, know the marketplace.

Google is huge, but slips like this are what give competitors the edge.

Three Internet companies — Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty — and their hundreds of partners were pilloried by Senate lawmakers and academics on Tuesday for deceptive marketing tactics.

“[T]he companies we are investigating have figured out very clever ways to manipulate consumers’ buying habits so they can make a quick buck,” said John D. Rockefeller IV, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, in a statement.

Read the full story here…