SOCIAL SHOLAY - Google v/s Facebook

Social Sholay- Google v/s Facebook. I recollect Dharmendar, with all the worlds anger in his eyes, tightening his muscles and saying "Gabbar Singh....aa raha hu mai"  (Gabbar Singh..I am coming to get you). He said that because Gabbar caused him lot of pain- killed his friend-Jai, abused his girl friend-Basanti, cut off Thakur's hands, and exploited Ramgarh for his advantage, AND Humiliated Veeru like anything. After all this, but obviously, anyone will then stand up and fight back to take revenge. I see....


Google                                      - as Veeru (Dharmendar)
Google's American Market    -  Jai 
Orkut                                         - Basanti
Facebook                                - Gabbar Singh
Social Media                           - Ramgarh
Google Wave                          - Thakur
Google Buzz                            -  Radha the widow (her existence doesn't matter)


Now let's watch the movie SOCIAL SHOLAY in a snapshot. ;)


As in above case Gabbar was hellbent on intentional damage, but I think Facebook's action was more of a Collateral Damage for Google. Facebook which was launched in Feb 2004 accelerated near 2008 in way as if Nitros were put on. Check out the figures I got from wikipedia. 

Total active users^{[N 1]} (in millions)

Date	Users	Days later
August 26, 2008	100[24]	1,665
April 8, 2009	200[25]	225
September 15, 2009	300[26]	160
February 5, 2010	400[27]	143
July 21, 2010	500[5]	166
—	600	32 (ongoing)

Facebook developed an innate ability to engage it's users. It kept on giving us reasons to be glued to it. Google's Basanti- Orkut was getting stripped of its beauty by Facebook. In India Facebook posed a big threat to Orkut reports NIELSEN. DISHUM 1

Earlier this year in March, timesonline.co.uk reported that Facebook had dethroned Google as the world’s most popular website. It got more traffic than Google in American market 
(Jai got killed). DISHUM 2

Adding to the humiliation was announcement of Google Wave's exit (Thakur's hands cut off)- a real time communication and collaboration web application. Google in its official blog announced that further developments on WAVE will stop by this year's end, it said WAVE didn't get the user adoption they had expected it to get. DISHUM 3. In my earlier post Google Wave's Last Breath I explained why Facebook might be one of the reasons of Waves exit. 

Overall, it seems Facebook is trying to capture Ramgarh, the social media market. 

Earlier i used the word Collateral Damage , I use it here again because as it can be observed Facebook's hits (punches i mean) were not intentional. But whatever may be the case Google's is not a company known for taking punches. Google, I think is proactive, forward thinking. Somewhere, it might have lost the track for a while but now the HOT NEWS around these days is that of  GOOGLE ME- a Facebook rival- that is being made in Google's labs. The inception of GoogleME took place on twitter, and the extractor (if I have understood Inception movie correctly) was Digg Founder, Kevin Rose. Ever since then, media has been reporting something or the other about GoogleMe. Google CEO, Chairman of the Board, Eric Schmidt, in interview with The Wall Street Journal however denied clinically saying, "“The world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing.” 

But VEERU is up and raring to take on Gabbar now. This is what Google is doing which hints at what Kevin Rose said.

Google bought SLIDE, as per PCWORLD report, Slide develops virtual community applications used on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. They include SuperPoke Pets, Top Fish, SPP Range and SuperPocus Academy of Magic. The company was founded by Max Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal.

Techcrucnh reported Google invested in Zynga, the maker of games like Farmville, Mafia Wars. Techcruch guesses there will be lots more news on Google Games in the near future. Google might also want on to cash on the social gaming trend. Yes, social gaming is or in fact has come big time. Zynga reportedly earns $500,000.00 per day according to socialmediaexaminer.com (click on the link to learn more on that). 

It seems to me that Google will definitely come out with a biggie. I don't think it will launch another Facebook like site but instead will integrate social gaming in its offerings. We could then play Google games, share it via buzz, gmail. May be, if it does, come out with a social site, then it will ensure all its technology right from gmail to wave are put to good use. Networking, sharing, liking, gaming, Wave like real time interaction all at one place. But I hope it keeps Gmail separate. 

What do you think how's it going to be??? OR what should it be like??? 


Jo darr gaya samjho marr gaya...