The evolution of iGoogle and the socialization of Google

Until now, iGoogle has displayed multiple gadgets on a single page, but recently added a "canvas view" that allows you to display a single gadget full-screen. This canvas view, especially for Gmail and Google Reader gadgets, allows many of the features of individual services to be used directly on the gadget, greatly improving convenience.

This change in iGoogle, which has already been stated, foreshadows iGoogle's OpenSocial support and suggests that Google as a whole will become a social network in the future. In fact, Google's move toward becoming a social network itself is already evident in many places.

Going social with Google #

Gmail Contacts (Contact List) #

Google has brought the social graph, the most important element in forming a social network, into Gmail/Google Talk. Naturally, this is a given. These contacts (contact lists) are also imported onto Android phones and used as phone books, creating a realistic social graph.

Google Maps Profile #

Google Maps, which has been the subject of recent privacy concerns, actually has a profile feature. By clicking the "Profile" link at the top of the screen, you can create/view your own profile. This is linked to your Google Profile, which will be discussed later.

Google Reader sharing feature #

Google Reader is an RSS reader, but it also has a feature that lets you share interesting articles with friends with the touch of a button. This feature utilizes the social graph of your Gmail contacts, which is also utilized here.

Google Profile #

Google Profile seems to have been quietly created without anyone noticing. It will be interesting to see how it develops in the future.

The user's photo, nickname, and address are displayed in the upper left of the screen, and detailed profile information is displayed below. Currently, the information includes their address, places they've lived in the past, schools they've attended, companies they've worked for, and a brief resume. In addition, there are also some unusual items, such as things you can't find on Google and psychic powers (?), which can be edited from this screen.

And then there's "Links." For now, it's just a link, but you can register external services you use. What's interesting is that if you register FriendFeed, for example, a whole host of other services will automatically appear as registration suggestions. It seems like they're using the Google Social Graph API here. FriendFeed does indeed embed a microformat called rel=”me”.

Message function #

A messaging feature has recently been added to Google Profiles. While I can only confirm its existence in the English version, it appears you can send messages from your profile page. This is likely also in line with OpenSocial compatibility.

How will Google change in the future?

As Google becomes more social, we've made some predictions about what changes we might see in the future.

Gadgets on your Google profile #

You'll almost certainly be able to add gadgets to your Google profile as well.

OpenSocial has four predefined views: home view, canvas view, profile view, and preview view. Aside from the preview view, which is used to confirm gadget addition, iGoogle already provides a home view (my page) similar to that of a typical social networking site, and a canvas view that displays only gadgets. Therefore, it seems natural that the remaining view would be a profile page.

iGoogle integration for your Google profile #

Integrating your Google profile with iGoogle is not impossible. While you can currently view the contents of your Google profile in the iGoogle Sandbox environment, perhaps integrating it with other apps would bring you closer to others and make iGoogle more social.

Activity Stream #

We can already see glimpses of it in the iGoogle Sandbox, but we're about to see a clearer picture of OpenSocial's Activity Stream feature. The Activity Stream is like a user's activity history, similar to friends' diaries and community updates on Mixi.

OpenSocial defines a feature for registering activities from gadgets, but I expect iGoogle will also add a FriendFeed-like feature that automatically incorporates feeds from linked services. Microsoft's Windows Live Home feature also has a similar feature.

summary #

I started writing this article about Google Profiles, but somehow the topic has expanded and become quite large. However, I honestly can't imagine how influential Google, which is steadily expanding its social graph with Gmail at its core, will be if it were to take on the form of a full-fledged social network. I wonder if they had this in mind when they created Gmail? It will be interesting to see how things develop.