Reader Integrates Google's Stealth Social Net: The Address Book

The trusty address book in your Gmail account (assuming you have one) is actually much more than just a simple database of names and contact info. It's Google's stealth social network. The reason is that the search engine is increasingly utilizing the Gmail contact list as a pseudo web service to power its other applications. It's brilliant because, in the process, Google will turn every service from one that is static to something social.

Google is the first to recognize the power of address books, but they won't be the last. This is something I have written about before - every portal that offers webmail will become a social network.

Tonight we have a new application of this concept to play with in the wild. This one closely follows Google Maps, which took the same approach.

Google Reader became the latest Google service to leverage the Gmail contact database and become more social. The Reader team turned on a new feature that is powered by the Gmail address book. The popular RSS reader now lets you easily see what your friends are sharing from their river of news and allows you to do the same. This turns Google Reader into a social network, complete with profiles - the same found in Google Maps.

This change is small, but significant. It's indicative of how Google (wisely) plans to attack social networking. It is tapping into the Gmail address book and using it to transform all of its static services into on-the-fly communities. Factor in OpenSocial and you can see the beginnings of something big.

Social networking isn't just about a few standalone sites but a bunch of different address books that actually make the entire web more social.

Comments

[Richard Geller]

Steve, I have been getting your stuff in my G news reader and really think you are onto something here. Very much so.

Social media should be organic. If you've already got connections to people, why not use social media to explore these connections in meaningful ways with regard to issues, products and services, websites, etc.

De.lioc.us is like this in a way becasue it was supposed to be a natural organic way to share bookmarks.

Contrast this with a lot of social media where you have to try pretty hard. This shouldn't involve effort.

Makes a lot of sense.

--Richard

[Narendra]

Time to drop social from social network. It is your network.

[Jeff Monaghan]

And probably the reason Google let Microsoft "win" the Facebook bidding. Great post.

[Douglas Karr]

Combined with use of Google maps, they also know where we live and work. :)

[Anthony]

Well, Big G is quick to crawl into every part of our life and I guess Google has the largest information arsenal on earth now. Kind of scary to think of it...Thanks Steve for the info..

[Graeme Thickins]

I've been wondering when we'd get to the concept of a "social RSS reader"....
Guess we're there.

regards,
Graeme
www.NewMediaWise.com

[Paul Jacobson]

I agree with you about address books being underestimated and underutilised but Google is hardly the first company to exploit them as the focal point of a social network. Plaxo cottoned on to this idea some time ago and Pulse is a pretty decent development in this area.

I have been meaning to do a post about this idea for a couple days now because I see the future of social networks being focussed on individuals rather than on specific services. The model of a lifestream that can be ported to various services is probably the best model we have available because it tends to be trend neutral and not affected by which site is in vogue, provided the sites used support feeds and the lifestream concept.

[Jeff Ruday]

Steve - I parse the use of Gmail's +addresses a little further. I have two special plus addresses set up: (1) remember+ and (2) howto+. Using these e-mail addresses plus a short, clear subject line and a few key words allows me to have a data base of many types of unrelated bits of information I want to remember, and access to step by step instructions on "how to" perform many types of specific technical tasks. I do not even use labels in my system for these two plus addresses. Not necessary. The plus addresses narrow the search and the key words do the rest.

I am always looking for the best way to make my Gmail data redundant and I like your idea of keeping a TB/IMAP synced back up of your Gmail on box.net. Very smart. I don't use box.net so I am wondering if you can set up SyncBack or similar tool to automatically back up your TB profile folder to box.net? Would you know? Thanks, Jeff.

[Rainbow mind]

Address books uses are evolving significantly.