Why Google Will Merge Orkut and Blogger

Veronis and Suhler Stevenson (VSS) sees a day fast approaching when we will be over-saturated in media, according to this TelevisionWeek report. I believe it. If there's one thing problematic with the Information Age it is that there's just too much to take in!

Currently I subscribe to about 350 "real" news and blog feeds using FeedDemon and Bloglines. Many of these, particularly the blogs, are filled with thousands of pearls of wisdom. Despite these powerful aggregation tools, I find it impossible to read all these feeds and end up scanning probably about half (at most) on a daily basis. The problem is going to only escalate as online publishing becomes cheaper and easier. I find new blogs to read almost every day.

Thankfully, despite the gloomy VSS predictions, Google will again free us from information clutter, just as they have done time and again. They will eventually merge their Orkut social networking site and Blogger Web publishing system to establish communities of "trusted bloggers." A unified Blogger/Orkut platform will make it easier for us to identify the most credible/valuable bloggers who write about the subjects that matter to us. The system will be even better than the tools we use now to measure influence, such as Technorati. Some are already experimenting with such a model, but Google will prevail.

You can already see the early beginnings of this in Blogger's recent relaunch. Google is grouping bloggers into discrete communities. Orkut has an eerily similar community system. I can easily envision a day when Google will realize the tremendous power of merging these platforms into a single entity that facilitates information publishing/sharing and retrieval -- if they haven't already.

IMHO, this will all make our job - reaching online influencers - just a little bit easier.

Comments

[Jeremy Zawodny]

When I wrote this I hadn't thought much about blogger yet.

Hmm.

Time for some more thinking...

[Frank Ruscica]

Hey, you're talking about Go_Ogle!

Earliest details -- from March 31, 2003 -- are athttp://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=59045&cid=5632134

Under the title:

Google+Blogger+IPO=Go_Ogle, Online Dating Search

The Microsoft-approved biz plan for Go_Ogle is at www.jobczar.us/businessplan.html

And you are right: the Semantic Web-enabled blog ad ecosystem is a-comin'!

Enjoy,

Frank

[Scott Allen]

Actually, I think the Technorati model is a better model. Why? Because it reflects what people actually take the time and effort to discuss and link to. This indicates that someone is actually reading and putting thought into what someone else is writing about. Frankly, it's even more accurate than a blogroll (assuming your blogroll isn't sync'd with the OPML from your newsreader). It's very much like scientific/academic citation, which has long been considered the most reliable measure of credibility in those communities.

The problem with basing a list of "trusted" bloggers on relationships within Orkut is that, like on so many YASNS, there's little or no real "trust" in the designation of "friend" in actual practice.

The reality is that there is FAR more "trust" indicated in someone's aggregator subscription list than in any token designator in an SNS.

And you can't standardize this. It will only change when people's practices change. And so long as there are new people coming into the sites who are just amazed at the possibility of hundreds or thousands of new friends, don't expect the human behavior to change, either.

[Peter Caputa]

The details are yet to be worked out, but I predict the merging of email, social networking and blogging.

And technorati will play a role in that game.