Kai-fu Lee: Facebook must pay attention to G

Google's new social services google++ launched quickly after the industry praised the news that its registered users will soon reach 10 million. google++, Chairman and CEO of Innovation Workshop, wrote "Can you challenge Facebook?" to comment on the competition between Google + and Facebook. G is a very good product, he says, and Facebook and Zuckerberg must pay attention.

The following is the full text:

We can analyze g from different levels.

From the product level: G is a very good product, has been praised by critics. G's user experience is designed by Andy Hertzfeld, which combines features of Facebook, Twitter, and even Sina Weibo. Several particularly excellent product features: 1 integrated versatility (see below), 2 more mobile apps than Facebook, especially on Android, 3 friends management features are far better than Facebook, there are many circles, 4 more easily shared, 5 better chat features, Especially the introduction of video chat.

From the integration level: G also introduced Gmail contacts (Gmail has 200 million users!). In addition, video, search, maps, Picasa, DOC, YouTube are leading the industry's products, are now integrated into the G, for Google loyal users, this really is a very convenient Google's integrated products. For it, even Google's menu has become black!

From the user to reflect the level: G launched 10 days before reaching nearly 10 million users, this speed is unthinkable, and only Google's backstage to support such crazy growth. In addition, many of the world's internet bosses have moved home to G (for example: Robert Scoble, Bill Gross, Danny Sullivan, Kevin Rose, Guy Kawasaki ...), some of which have moved their blog home page to G.

From a technical point of view: Google's backstage has played a role. Google's machine learning and data mining has also been smart enough to suggest a lot of friends to me. In the future, better search, better content recommendation and discovery, and more technology requiring huge backstage, all use Google's advantage. Google already has each user's mailbox, search records, and other usage habits, can be used to optimize the user's experience and options.

From the determination level: Google this year's staff bonuses bundled with social share, in many failed social products after repeated defeats, accumulated past failure experience, secretly to create G.

From an eco-environmental perspective: Google will use very good conditions (such as higher partitioning, more open APIs) to attract companies that do not want to rely too much on Facebook, such as Zynga. Google will sell social products and other products to advertisers.

From the capital level, Google has nearly 20 billion cash and has long said it does not care about a quarterly profit for strategic goals. Whether as a promotional fee, cooperation fees, buying partners, purchasing companies, this huge resource can not be overlooked.

From the strategic and Internet configuration level: Google is an open company, I hope everyone is open to search the organization of all information. Facebook is a closed company that wants to use its own resources to create value alone. This year, because of Facebook's strength, Google is unable to include the content of the world's largest web site. In the long run, this will hurt Google's search experience and integrity. So Google must want to force Facebook to be more open, so G should take the open route, provide more open APIs, and hope that more small social products and even platform content will be put on the G platform. This will push Facebook to a more open line.

Of course, Google also faces many big challenges:

G is too late, now that Facebook has 700 million loyal users and a successful platform for many apps, advertisers have started to hit Facebook rather than the official website.

G is a good design, but building a community is not skyrocketing, but requires careful management, the user, content, feedback, etc. into a multi-step and often modified products. Some say G is the best carpenter, but raising a community is like planting a tree, and a carpenter can't build a tree. Facebook, for example, is gradually being designed by a user-first name, then Ivy, then all the universities, then high school, then a few big companies, and finally only open registration. Each stage is the process of learning progress, focus on solving a user group problem, and then take the next step, step by step to build today's Facebook. and G to 10 million users, soon over billion, whether there is enough time to iterate, to correct the various problems? Will it not be possible to hear the user's voice clearly because of the dispersed user base? From the development of stack overflow and yahoo Answers (they are similar to knowing and Baidu knows, Of course, Yahoo answers did not know so successful Baidu, we can see a similar situation.

G is initially supported by the valley powder and geek users, but these people are not necessarily the best seed users in the community. The valley powder and the geek appreciate the exquisite design, but they do not necessarily have the most complete social circle, the strongest dissemination function, also not necessarily can create the most eye-catching content.

G inevitable success and g inevitable failure of the reasons are very good. At best, G can challenge Facebook hegemony or force Facebook to open. Worst case scenario G will also be a survival of a social class (Robert Scoble says the worst G will be a geek community).

So Facebook and Zuckerberg certainly have to focus on G.