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What if Google Started Twoogle?

May 19, 2009 BY Mark Evans

Larry Page’s comments today about Twitter and real-time search prompted this question: What would happen if Google launched a micro-blogging platform?

I’m not talking about Jaiku, which is DOA, but a new service from the propeller heads within the GooglePlex that would match Twitter’s basic functionality AND offer a variety of frills that Twitter has no interest in providing.

Before this idea is summarily dismissed, Google has a track record for launching me-too products such as GMail, Google Reader, Picasa and Google Maps. So why not Twoogle? What does it have to lose?

While Twitter obviously dominates the micro-blogging market, I think it’s vulnerable to competition. Twitter’s biggest weakness – aside from the lack of a business plan – is how its platform has not evolved much over the past year or so. Sure, search is better and it recently introduced trends but Twitter still lacks sizzle.

Google could launch a Twitter-like service that would be integrated into your GMail username and password. It could throw in some Picasa functionality to share photos (a la TwitPic), some link-sharing via Google Reader and some document sharing via Google Docs. Voila, a multi-featured micro-blogging platform.

What do you think? Should Google take another stab at the micro-blogging game?

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  • Corvida

    If they intended to make it mainstream there's no way they could do this. Who's doing that now outside of the early adopters on Twitter? Sure they share photo's, but how many of them are using Gmail versus Yahoo?

    It would be as unnecessary as it is now for the future of the service. The developers of the Twitter community are there for things such as that.

  • http://shegeeks.net Corvida Raven

    If they intended to make it mainstream there's no way they could do this. Who's doing that now outside of the early adopters on Twitter? Sure they share photo's, but how many of them are using Gmail versus Yahoo?

    That's not what Twitter needs to focus on. That's for the Twitter developer community.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/digitalize digitalize

    If it does go down the Twitter road, I imagine it will be something akin to OpenSocial; not really a Twitter copy, but rather services/tools that enable micro-blogging and combine the power of Blogger, Picasa, Google Friend Connect, etc.

  • http://technbiz.blogspot.com Paramendra Bhagat

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