Worlds favorite social networking website, Facebook may announce its e-mail service on Monday, Nov 15. Media reported that the secret project, named as Project Titan, will offer @facebook.com email addresses for users. The reports also added that the Project Titan can be regarded as Gmail Killer.
The special November event of Facebook is expected to held at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The event will surface Project Titan, which will change Facebooks entire messaging system.Social media blog Mashable reported that Facebook will launch the e-mail service as the sites current users are unable to send messages outside of Facebook, and the system cant handle simple things like attachments and forwarding.
After a massive salary hike and increase in bonus for the employees, lets wait for the new reaction of internet giant Google for the new Gmail Killer.
Rivalry:
Even though Google’s global web traffic stands at 9.3% compared to 7% of Facebook, Facebook’s page views have rapidly caught up in the past year to trail just behind Google.
Facebook and Google’s rivalry has become legendary. Google’s policy to focus on the user primarily as a source of data and Facebook’s philosophy of focusing on the user as a human, generating data and interactions (a social graph), are now at loggerheads with each other. There is a great debate over which approach will win in the long run.
To have an insight in to the current scenario lets concentrate on some recent facts and events.
Facebook’s 40,000 servers host 200 million users which is one fifth of all the internet users. On an average they spend 20 minutes on the site daily. Also on an average, they upload 850 million photos and 8 million videos every month. Status updates, news stories and other forms of communication on Facebook measure up to 4 billion instances of information monthly.
But the sheer amount of data is not the most attractive feature here. There are 2 features that set this data apart from all other kinds of user data. Firstly this data is treated as proprietary data which can be accessed only via Facebook, safeguarding it from Google’s outreach. Secondly, this data is very authentic. This is because people use their real names, provide genuine information about themselves and their tastes and link to real friends. This is different from other online portals/services where their behavior is far more impersonal.
Therefore the personalization that Google has been trying to provide by implementing complex search optimization algorithms can be achieved far more easily in Facebook. Facebook has recognized this advantage and introduced the Facebook Search feature last year. This allows users to search anyone’s feeds. Therefore it has become possible to get your friend’s opinion over something rather than accepting the opinions of the search results generated by a search engine.This trend has already begun to yield results. According to Hitwise, Facebook in 2009 sent more users than Google to Evite, video site Tagged.com, gossip mills Perez Hilton.com and Dlisted.
To capitalize further on this advantage, Facebook launched Connect, a network of more than 10,000 independent sites that lets users access their Facebook relationships without logging in to Facebook .com. For example one can go to Digg and see which stories their friends have recommended. Previously users had to visit the Facebook website to keep a tab on their friends. But after the tie ups, relevant information about your friends can be exported to external web sites, if preferred, for your use. Essentially Facebook is creating options to link up your entire web activity via your Facebook account.
But there is a very fine line between going open and losing privacy. Facebook has faced much flak in the past few days due to privacy violations. In short it is facing the ultimate dilemma of every social network which is that though it has a huge reserve of authentic data, every time it tries to capitalize on this data, it receives great opposition from the generators of that data.
Google is also aware of this critical advantage that Facebook has. In 2007 Google had attempted to acquire Facebook but eventually lost out to Microsoft( Facebook encourages users to use bing while searching the web via their accounts). Also in 2008, Google released Friend Connect the same day Facebook launched Connect which allows web sites to link to accounts on any of the major social networks—including MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, and Bebo. Even then success has eluded Google. Some rumors surfaced last year that Google was reconsidering initiating a deal with Facebook.
Facebook has a lot of potential but what is holding it back? Facebook has data but Google has size. In 2009 Google boasted a cash reserve of $24.5 billion while Facebook had begun to acquire cash reserves only towards the end of 2008. Also Facebook will truly be able to use its advantages only if it is able to convince its consumers to let out their personal, private information to vendors and advertisers. In the face of the recent controversies, this is proving to be extremely difficult.
As Google and Facebook race each other neck to neck, it is the users who hold the power button in this scenario. It is upon them to decide how they will allow the biggies to shape their experience on the internet.
