28 Jun 2011
Google has launched a range of new products that introduce social elements and will see it take on Facebook.
The company’s new plan is built around four separate features called Circles, Sparks, Hangout and Huddle. Google is keen to stress that the new products do not form a new, single social network that rivals Facebook, but it is the search giant’s most serious attempt to incorporate social elements into its products to date.
Writing on the Google blog, senior vice president of engineering Vic Goduntra said that “Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”
Initially, Google is conducting a ‘field trial’, inviting select journalists, bloggers and other organisations, and it has not said when the products will launch more widely.
Circles is the closest product to Facebook; it allows users to drag in contacts to individual groups. The aim is to allow people to share different things with different groups of people more easily. Google users will be able to add their contacts, or import them from Yahoo or Microsoft. Facebook does not permit the export of contact information to Google.
Full story at The Telegraph.
Full story at The Telegraph.
