Last May, senior Google UX designer Paul Adams published a “Bridging the gap between our online and offline social network” regarding his work in understanding people’s social behavior. Last week, he released an updated version of his presentation entitled “Real Life Social Network v2”.
Two additional events grabbed the attention of the press.
A – Google is to invest a large amount of money in Zynga, the leader in social gaming.
B – Google is working on a “Google Me” social project.
Adding to it, Mr Chris Cinelli summarized Google Me possible features in a Quora forum making it sound like Google is inspiring itself on how we interact with people in real life.
Techcrunch and CNN, both ran articles on these points. We thought it would nice to present the Hibe perspective to this.
1) We are very happy to see that the concepts of real life social networks are being recognized by a major player in the industry. One cannot easily transpose these concepts online.
We spent nights and days of the past two years testing the limit of technology. Every day these concepts test our capacity to advance. We fight back, we fight hard, and we will deliver Hibe.
2) Our researches led to different places than Paul Adams’. His analysis is rooted heavily on user experience, while ours tries to integrate social researches done by field specialists as well as a good dose of self-analysis. To illustrate some of the variances, I prepared a quick “Real life social network v2 – Commentary” you can find on Slideshare.
3) The Google Me media coverage establishes that Hibe is in a great position to meet the social challenges of 2010. Our facet and booklet technologies enable us to fill the new needs of social network users and open the door to a new world of applications and services.
4) It is increasingly challenging for Google to remain committed to its users’ privacy when their only economic model is about mining user data to better service their advertisers.
5) Thanks to Paul Adams for sharing his work with the community and all the best for his book “Social Circles”. (to be released in August)
