Open letter to Google and Yahoo!
July 16th, 2007
Hello big guys…
I probably know you won’t read me but here it goes. I promise to keep it short and sweet. Looks like both of you are working on some “secret social network†so here’s what I think about this.
1. Please don’t reinvent the wheel.
There are dozens of popular networking sites out there and there are hundreds if not thousands that are not so popular. You have a dog? There’s one for you. You’re a single mom, there’s one for you. You like to play tennis underwater in underpants? I bet there’s one out there jusssst for you. Sorry to say but Youtube won over Google Videos. Why? there were some factors (I’d say lack of innovation) but the mean thing is that Youtube won and that cost the Google guys a few billions. But that’s ok, you guys still have some cash left so let’s move on…
2. All sites require you to register and fill out this lengthy questionnaire.
I’m on a few networking sites and I don’t want to waste my time joining others. Will I join Yahoo’s or Google’s? Perhaps I will if they use the same ID and keep it short. It was a great idea to move Orkut to the centralized account but that should’ve been done a long time ago. Because of that, I never bothered migrating my Orkut account so it’s basically dead. I’m probably missing out on some things but I don’t know and don’t really care at this point. So a lesson: keep it easy otherwise people will move.
3. Build stuff people want.
First, I don’t care about what my friend’s music preferences are and I really don’t want to hear his/her favourite song while I visit his profile. I hate the music they like anyway! I’m very picky as far as music so I couldn’t care less about the fact that they like the latest Madonna album. In fact, I don’t really want to see my friends’ profiles. They’re my friends, I know who they are, right? They could be allowed to “push†things onto my profile (like shared pictures and such) but I shouldn’t have to visit their profile every day just to see if they uploaded new pictures. Lesson to learn: everything should be customizable. Not only your own profile but others as well.
Second, any network site around is just that: a network site. That really sucks! I beg you, please build something on top of it. As I mentioned in the past, Facebook started their “classified siteâ€. This is what I’m talking about! Think global! Think Linkedin meets eBay meets Digg meets Monster meets rent.com meets CNN meets Facebook meets Expedia meets Delicious meets Youtube and so on. Why go to eBay when you can see who has what you want around you? Yes these things already exist but they are pointless and should be centralised into a giant site if you prefer. Yahoo!: you guys already have all this but spread all over..! Please fix this! Yahoo 360 is nice but it’s too complex even for a geek like me. Your services are still not integrated! Are you getting too big to act quickly? Google: you guys have many pieces of the puzzle, keep working on it but hurry up..! Both of you need to hurry up as Facebook is expanding (that was a great move, but hurry up and get features!)
4. Build something fun, new but interesting.
Tag not only images to events, places and so on but also people to images. If I read critics about a restaurant or some travel destination, I should be able to see pictures people took while over there. Same goes with profiles. If I see my friend’s pictures, he should be able to tag people in the picture so that I can visit their profiles. That way, your network grows easily as you can search not only your friends’s friends, but also their friends in their pictures. Now that’s something new and fun, no?
Why not make a social network of social networks? For example, I like cats so my front end should be about cats (sort of like catster). My friend like motorcycles? Well he should have a bike front end (sort of well… you get it). When I search for friends, I would see their “cat viewâ€, meaning I wouldn’t really know they have a Kawasaki bike, but I would see they have a brown tabby named “Brownieâ€.
Micro blogs are also a neat thing. Add micro blogs to anything you can think of. From pictures to restaurant ratings to travel destination. Now something important!
Build something interesting and long lasting! I’m pretty sure Myspace will be deserted as soon as the latest trend pops out. That remains to be seen but knowing the current generation, their attention span is not very long and if the word is out that Myspace is sooo 2006, people will move on. What do you get from Myspace? Not much… It is really the convenience store from the 90’s but now online. People are still hanging out and wasting their time…! Now this also brings in a serious question: who is your market? Lots of pre-teens and teens with no money? Middle-age people with lots of money to spend and don’t know where to spend it? That’s a marketing issue that I will leave up to you to decide but remember: build something for everyone. Even my mom should be able to enjoy this place. I definitively don’t see my mom using Myspace. No way.
5. Hire me 
Just joking (well maybe not), but you see, this is only 1% of the ideas I have in mind. You guys need to listen to the early adopters and start building something new and useful. I haven’t seen anything innovative coming from you guys lately. Perhaps those two projects will make me go “Wow!†but I’d say the drag and drop map thingy on Google Maps was the greatest thing in the last few years or so. Smaller players are catching up and acquiring them doesn’t always work out as you want (Where’s Dodgeball now?).
6. Good luck
Will there be a “winner� I doubt, it’s like TV stations. You need all kinds of TV channels to keep everyone happy but you need to keep everyone happy. Some people don’t like when I say that but I think “niche†is a nice way of saying that you failed with mass market.
Posted in Google, Yahoo, business, facebook, ideas, internet, myspace, social network, technology | Comments (1)
July 16th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Speaking of Google, perhaps it’s time to admit that the emperor is buck naked? Google is no longer an asset to small business. It’s digressed into a black box designed to extract as much money as possible from small business while giving back as little value as possible. This piece explains why Adwords is something to be skeptical about: “Why Google Adwords is Not Helpful to Small Business” http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/07/a-fable-doing-b.html