Paul Adams' presentation could give clues to Google's social network tool

It's been known for a while that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) wants a piece of the social internet. So far their social attempts can best be charitably described as "stumbles." On the business side there was Google Wave, which Google recently moth balled, and on the personal-consumer side there is Google Buzz, a service that started with a lot of controversy over privacy issues and has not developed a huge following compared to other social networking such as Facebook and Twitter.

But there is probably a new, more comprehensive consumer tool on the horizon. Paul Adams from Google offered some broad strokes in a recent presentation about what this new tool could look like.

In a Slideshare presentation Adams explained social networking in general, what Google sees as the problems inherent in the current system and how they could solve those problems.

Chief among the problems is the idea that, on Facebook in particular, you have one amorphous group of friends. As Adams points out throughout the presentation, this is not how real life works. In real life we have business friends, friends from a hobby or religious affiliation, friends from different places we have lived in our lives and of course we have family. While it's not impossible in Facebook to divide these friends into separate groups and apply security settings about what each one can see, it's not a trivial matter to do so. (See "Facebook: Dividing Your Friends into Groups" for information on how to do this.)

Adams also does a nice job of defining how we interact with people online: We have strong ties, those people we interact with most often; we have weak ties, those we interact with occasionally; and we have temporary ties, people we may interact with once such as a customer service rep. (See "Outside a Small Circle of Friends.")

Adams goes on to cover the notion of privacy. He says privacy should be the developer's top priority. He adds that privacy and trust go hand in hand. Just ask the Facebook executive team if you doubt this.  

This presentation provides some insight into Google's research around social networking and how they might approach such a tool. It's seems pretty clear that such a tool is coming, but will Google learn the lessons from its research (and from Facebook's gaffes) and create a tool that gives the user total control over their online social lives? If it can do that, Facebook better beware. If not, it could be Google Wave all over again.

For more information:
- see Paul Adams' presentation on Slideshare

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