Google Takes on Facebook

Since when do these two sites have anything in common?

With both of the company's prime revenue sources being advertising revenue, Facebook and Google are far more alike that you might have thought. So why would a juggernaut like Google be afraid of an up and coming pip-squeak like Facebook? Well the answer lies in Facebook's potential.

Facebook has been stealing away some of the top brass from Google over the last few months. With Google continuously being a company that seems to see the future before we do, this must mean something. By design, Facebook has a great potential to serve up concentrated ads to prospects in ways that Google hasn't been able to yet. With Facebook's customers having already submitted most of the lives and waking moments to their website you're able to analyze this data which can be sold out almost at the rate of J.D. Power's customer satisfaction ratings. This is valuable information about the younger up and coming crowds.

So what can Google do to stop Facebook? They're leveling the playing field. Over the past week, Google has launched what they call "Open Social" which in escence is another social networking site. Now before you roll your eyes, you have to see the power in what Google is producing. With Google representing the 21st century hippies of today they want to make everything open and free; so what do they do? They allow Open Social to be an integration medium between MySpace, Jaiku, Pownce and LinkedIn. Along with being your one stop spot for social networking they're going to include all of the details that have made google so great to begin with such as integrating G-Mail, Google Applications, and Google Search into your social networking sites.

So where does Facebook still have the advantage? Applications; Facebook is the leading customizable social network on the web because of their open forum when it comes to applications used on their pages. Applications are relatively easy to create and integrate into your page and you're able to see what Applications your friends are running on their pages. Google's challenging this by creating an open forum for Applications as well. Now when developers are coming up with their various social networking Applications they're developing for two major platforms, Facebook and now Google's Open Social. The playing field has been leveled, and the ball's in Facebook's court; we'll see what unravels next.