Google News Launches Facebook Application

NewsCloud writes "Eight days after Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Zeitgeist conference attendees that social networks account for an 'enormous proportion [of Internet usage]...it's a very real phenomenon,' Google News has launched its own Facebook application. Says Google News: 'This experimental application enables users to create custom sections or select from a set of pre-defined topics, then browse and share stories with their friends on Facebook. We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience.' Check out Google News on Facebook (requires registration) — or view screenshots."

Comments

Can someone explain

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain WTF is FaceBook and why such things are popular? Aren't they "Me and my dog" homepages like the millions already on the net?

Re:Can someone explain

[LordLucless]

At its core, Facebook is primarily a system for establishing relationships between accounts. You can sign up and set all sorts of properties on your profile - what school you went to, year you graduated, area you live, places you've worked etc. You can then search in those areas and find other people who match - old schoolmates, old colleagues, old neighbours, that sort of thing. Because it's gotten so big, it works fairly well - I signed up, and almost straight away found a bunch of old school mates I hadn't seen for years, and was able to catch up with.

It's sort of grown from there - now people can write "applications" that you can add to your profile page that can do all sorts of things, from playing games, to building a personality profile, match-making, whatever.

Orkut?

[jmauro]

Will this application be compatable with Orkut? Google's own social networking/Facebook site?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it's just the MySpace give uses more chance to show off their IQ than Facebook. It's like what Jeff Foxworth says about people in the South, "They're as smart as everyone else, but they somehow cannot keep the dumbest ones off the television."

Re:Still in beta

[suv4x4]

> We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but...

What of Google's isn't in beta?

They lack direction. Their direction used to be better search, now it's just "more ad clicks in more places". The rest of their portfolio appears truly random to me, which it may very well be, as it consists mostly of "20% off time" projects left in the labs, or as early beta, or late beta.

Looks like the 20% time has side effects. Microsoft has been bashed here regularly for its strategy of entering in all markets it possibly can and observing "what sticks", but now Google is in the same situation, even more so.

Some random Google projects, which were abandoned while stuck in perpetual beta status:

Google Gears (the page say "early beta")
Google Video (looks like they recycled some of the tech in YouTube and left the rest stagnate)
Google Talk (what happened to this thing? They virtually abandoned it, and there are some known issues still not fixed in it)
Google Pack (they did an update some time ago, that rips off the look of Vista gadgets, and seems it staled)
Google Accelerator (the ill-received internet accelerator that will cache your password protected pages and share them out).
Google Product Search (former Froogle, now seems quite downplayed, and no development is happening in it. Of course, it's "beta")
Orkut, Picassa, Blogger, SketchUp: what's going on with those, they just bought them /except Orkut/ and sit on them, no development or updates.

Also I always wondered why they work on various improvements in the Labs, like Google Suggest, only to then never push them on the main site (oddly enough the Google search field in Firefox uses Google Suggest).

Epic 2015

[Troed]

... following the path predicted by many, and nicely depicted in this short flash movie called "Epic 2015". We're indeed seeing the death of news as we know it. How does it feel to become a tiny part of the global consciousness?

What about this isn't like AOL?

[foniksonik]

Back in 1995 AOL hit the net... it was an internally connected set of pages that covered everything you might want...with buddies, chat rooms, 'social networking', exclusive content (not public on the 'internet') and more.... I just don't see the difference between that experience and Facebook or MySpace or what have you. Their system is proprietary, your 'networks' only apply while on the site, logged in, consuming their advertising selection, logging your interests to their tracking systems and any content YOU create, actually belongs to them.

Tell me again why the public and the corporations didn't learn from the beast called AOL which has been dying a slow death for the last 10 years? Why aren't the press, the blogs and what have you calling them what they are... AOL 2.0 or Closed networks after AOL...

I don't get it. As far as I can tell it's just a big reservoir of virtual Kool Aid... it's not even real Kool Aid... just a big waste of time and energy that all goes to pay a few people mega salaries and a bunch of other people mediocre salaries. It also accomplishes nothing for the greater good, it's worse than a sitcom or American Idol.

Re:Still in beta

[colourmyeyes]

I am in grad school, and at least at my school, gtalk is the chat client; it's what AIM was in undergrad a few years ago. Everyone uses it because everyone has a gmail account - if you can check your email somewhere, you can send someone an instant message - no additional browser windows, no proxy issues.

Just my experience, but it has almost entirely replaced AIM for me. Google was smart to build chat into gmail.