iGoogle to be first big Google flop of 2009?

For those of you involved in keeping up with the latest iGoogle developments may be interested to know exactly what I think the “iGoogle Gadgets getting social smarts” and how in turn they are losing overall value to the end user. You see this concept currently in trial within the confines of Google according to Techcrunch.com not only mimicks and determentally alleviates the exisiting features of Facebook.com and their developer platform, but as proven in June 2008 will surely spell a catastrophic privacy disaster for Google and it’s “iGoogle Gadgets” , unless solved immediately.

Furthermore the thing that shocks me is how Google Friend Connect is going to be used “post friend updates”, which has been noted as a way to perhaps send messages to your friends on Google Friend Connect, however effective this will be at preventing Facebook Connect getting a strong user base it still shows lack of innovation and thought on Google’s behalf.  We can clearly see as well that if proven to be true all profile data already collected by Google for Google Friend Connect will be feed into the “social iGoogle”.

One thing recently discussed in a Vator.tv interview with Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience at Google was how Google would start focussing on how to integrate Google Talk into iGoogle, and when asked about whether iGoogle could become more social then Facebook Mayer replied:

“It’s possible. [But] iGoogle is focused a lot more on content. What are you going to read today? What game are you going to play today? What quote are you going to learn about? What word are you going to learn? As we go social, it’s going to be more about the content you’re consuming. Less about the demographic attributes, what music do I like. More about, what are you reading today; what are you doing today. You can imagine being able to share across your friends, and see three of your friends all watched this video, four of your friends just all read this newspaper article… You can imagine using your social network to help you find more interesting content. It’s a little bit more implicit, which I think would be successful, rather than explicit.

Google seem to not only have a shared purpose of mimicking, but also of continuing to mine for more of our data, building up a personal profile in far more detail then ever before, iGoogle has represented a data gap that displays so much about a person’s like and dislikes and what content both written and visual that they consume, the simplicity of the solution is indeed unsurpassed and Google provide a great way for users to have an all in one homepage at the search engine! 

And it’s not just Google who can get excited about this “central user homepage”, with a reported 45,000 web developers creating iGoogle gadgets the possibilities are Marissa Mayer of Google continues to mention in the Vator.tv interview is that “ you might not be a user’s homepage. But now you have a place on their homepage. Your brand is in front of that user every day”. with an undetermined top earning developer on iGoogle the revenue possibilities having become seemingly boundless with the release of “iGoogle Canvas View”.

Those “seemingly boundless” options will begin to fade to obscurity for many developers who don’t get into iGoogle quick enough, however iGoogle’s closest competitor Facebook has still got the majority of the third party developers, co-founder of RockYou.com Jia Shen said back in 2007 that “90% of their time was spent working on Facebook apps”, they went on during the same year to develop a strong set of widgets for the Facebook.com users and use their popularity to promote other RockYou widgets.

With Facebook’s already active 120 million user base making usage of the apps and beginning to build a strong personal social brand, is there any point of iGoogle attempting to become the go to place for social activity, with the majority of page views going Google’s way simply because people use the search as their default homepage it simply doesn’t fly with me that Google have their social priorities straight and that iGoogle will have any social success, iGoogle  to be first big Google flop of 2009!

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