Jeremiah Owyang offers some common sense advice to startups conducting their own blogger outreach; Geoff Livingston gives a good summary of a surprising new online privacy study, and Chris Brogan wonders about Google entering the social networking fray…

Don’t we, uh, NOT like it when social networks automatically decide to include/exclude people who we happen to be in touch with but may not want to share everything with?

Douglas

While google is connecting *useful* versions of all of these features. They aren’t locking you in to their versions however. The only thing that would keep you from using something else is that google has the most features that work together.

How very open. Google could beat everyone in the social networking world simply by being superior and open. Incredible.

One of the big challenges I saw from the outset for Facebook is that it is not essential for business. Google is. Today more and more companies are starting to block Facebook and whilst there is some noise about their moves being conservative – you cannot expect an organisation with 10000 staff to give its staff free access to Facebook. They would waste most of the time -as most do on Facebook. It is interesting to entertain a ‘professionalised’ version as an Intranet (without all the Fun and Super-wall type time wasting applications), or leaving some of the business developers or strategists to spend time on Facebook – but other than that – you cannot afford it.

Google and Microsoft have the advangtage of having access to us every day of the week. We need Google for work – and hence Google – has a huge advantage over Facebook and others.

On top of that, Google is a user generated brand that has been around for 10 years and we tend to trust Google as that brand. Facebook has years of work ahead.

Facebook could possibly have paved the way for Google – or maybe Microsoft.

Google is already profitable – Facebook still aspires to become profitable. In their battle to do so they also need to continue to stay on the ball when it comes to Facebook. So much still needs to happen.

Google is slowly gaining ground on Microsoft and starting to eat into marketshare of other companies and industries as well, like telephone and energy. They can do this because of the strength of their brand.

I tend to agree with you Chris, there are many angles from which Google is interesting to users – and more essential ones then Facebook at this stage. Both Google and Microsoft cannot be beaten when it comes to essential functionality.

We can still do our work without Facebook or other Social Networks.

I do agree that Google has my loyalty. When I want to do something new, I check to see if Google has a service for it first.

I’ve got 2 Google Accounts, each has different Reader feeds I follow. I use GDocs for most of my writing, including blog posts in progress. I have 2 Blogger blogs — I thought about starting my new one on a different service but Google was just familiar to me. I’ve even got Web history enabled.

But, those are all services I use for personal reasons.

When I want to talk with people, I’ve moved off email. I use Facebook, blog comments, Twitter (as of today), and other ways to interact.

So, would I use a Google-styled social network? Maybe. But there would still be a hurdle, it wouldn’t just be a natural step.

I think this entire arena is still young and needs to mature but I think Google has a nice start. Who knows how the landscape will look in a year or even 6 months, for me, I’m choosing platforms that make sense to me and make my life easier. It just so happens that Google generally wins.

One Google product that I’m not sold on is Picasa, it’s got a nice interface but something about it doesn’t sit right, Flickr is where I generally store my photos. Although, I have just started playing with ZenFolio and it has potential.

So, I don’t just jump into everything Google just because it’s Google.

Facebook, on the other hand, doesn’t turn my crank so much. I still go there when contacted by someone but I really don’t see value there, for me. It’s more of a playground. So, Chris, if it’s true that Google is positioning itself as a social media contender, which is entirely possible, then they have a decent shot, especially with my interactions.