According to the New York Times, Google are looking into getting into the social networking market in a big way with Gmail. Google hopes to ride on the wave surrounding social networking at the moment with the likes of Twitter and Facebook dominating these areas. Google is looking to use Gmail as it’s means for squeezing its way into this market.
Gmail is a very popular web based email service which is rapidly growing and it would be the perfect place for Google to try and establish some presence in the whole social network market. Later this week, Google are set to unveil some add-ons for Gmail which will let people post and view messages about their day-to-day activities, according to a source at Google briefed on its plans.
This minor little update will allow users to post their status updates within Gmail which is exactly what has driven the explosive growth of Twitter and Facebook over the last number of years. The main reason for there success is because people feel inclined to keep returning back over and over again to check if there’s any new status updates from their friends.
To date, all you can do is post a brief message about your status through the built in Gmail Chat system, but this doesn’t have the same effect . The new features would allow a more vibrant back-and-forth exchange among Gmail users.
However, it is not clear to date whether or not Google will add functionality and support for other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. I think if Google really want to get more and more people using Gmail, they need to give users a reason to move to it. I’m not currently aware of any major web based email service that has support for Facebook, Twitter etc…
I’m not so sure though as the whether or not I would like to see social networking come into my Gmail account. I use Gmail because it’s clean and uncluttered and isn’t filled with pointless status updates and notifications every time my friend does something. Gmail has less distractions and allows you to get things done without drifting off to check your friends status updates.
And that leads me onto another topic, are Google trying to take on more than they can handle? I think it’s great that they are diversifying themselves to other areas apart from search, but do they need to dominant in every field of the web? I don’t think so, I like a bit of variety with the services I use, but that’s an article for another time.
Do you think Google will make any impact on the social networking market with this move?
Let us know in the comments
