Dear Google, Take from Facebook what you have build over the years – the web

Me, Myself and My Google

I remember the first time I was plugged to internet back in 1997. I created my email id. It was on rediff.com. Then I surfed some porn sites. Then I saw yahoo.com. Almost everyone I knew was on rediff. Very soon, almost everyone was on Yahoo. And the most exciting thing to do was to do private and public chats on Yahoo Messenger. Then came the days when Yahoo chatrooms started to flood with nonsense messages, porn websites became popup machines and soon the internet became a wide wide shit. Those were the days when suddenly everything (I used) across the internet became too obstructive, complex and confusing.

In the midst of all those came google.com. A neat and clean interface for searching the web, which was perhaps the biggest problem at that time. Google took the challenge to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. And they did a great job with their search engine. People started liking google and used Yahoo, Rediff and MSN for their emails. Then came gmail.com and suddenly out of nowhere everyone had a gmail.com account. It was again neat and clean. And then again, all of a sudden, the voice chats, buzzes, beautiful big smileys, public chatrooms, multiple screen names, erotic talks on Yahoo chat came to and end simple non rich text formatted, non fancy UIed chat windows. Somehow people liked it. Probably they were bored of all the glittering stuff, or maybe some principle of UX design came into play. Ever since, Google became a part of everyone’s life with products like Docs, PicasaWeb, Blogger, News, Scholar, Books, Knol and many more. People had faith in Google, their ideas and their values. Off lately there are various slanders on Google about the way they use data to create relevant text ads, but despite all these, a vast majority of people still love Google.

What The Facebook?

Social Networking was something that was not so popular in India. Not in 2004, the year I went for my Bachelors in Engineering, the year Facebook was founded and the year Orkut was founded. Sooner, everyone I knew was on Orkut and it was kinda fun. We used to meet up, post scraps to each others, and had communities where we discussed the C++ puzzles. Life was easy and fun. This probably continued till early 2008s (in India) when people were not accepting facebook because they found it too complex to use. Probably people just could not visualize what is “writing on wall”. And then facebook kept evolving, changing its UX to make it more resemble the real world interactions. That is where Orkut was left behind. Orkut was good for novice users who expected barely scraps and messages and communities for interactions. But as it goes in the real world, you appreciate, like, comment on your friends’ activities. All of a sudden, all this was possible on Facebook. One other problem with Orkut was of privacy. I remember there were communities where pictures of real girls from their profile was hotlinked and posted. This obviously irritated a lot of people and they started to remove their content from Orkut. Almost at the same time, as I precisely remember, the Indian community was starting to look towards facebook because it was social, it was fun and it was secure. Orkut was still being used by those who were new to social networking and then they gradually graduated to use facebook.

Soon, everyone I knew was on facebook, even my mom, my dad and my 8 year old cousin. Life became easy. Google released OpenSocial in late 2007 and people started to develop games and apps for Orkut. It could have been a big hit if people had been using Orkut or they had interest. Orkut failed to attract new users and even continue old users. Orkut started to die, and pictures of Orkut – R.I.P became popular on the internet.

You like it

Sure you will ask me, what’s the big deal with that. Google is in search and ads, and facebook is in social networking. Facebook already beat Google’s Orkut, so do they still compete? The answer is – more now than ever.

Sometimes in last year or maybe last to last year “Like Button” was introduced, and very soon every webpage on the planet started to have a “Like This” button. (Even this page has one, please like/recommend it. Thank you 🙂 The concept is pretty neat. Your friends see that you like/recommend Bellicose beliefs, and they will probably come and read what is it. If they “like” it, it goes on virally. Alternatively, if you come to Bellicose Beliefs two years later and you see that one of your friends like it, you will be more interested in reading the content. This is a win win situation for the web admins/ bloggers/ any other website and probably that is the reason for it becoming so popular, so soon. Now looking at the other aspect, facebook has a record of all the pages you like and your friends like and their friends like. So, they are more close to figuring out your taste, your work, your life and provide you better ads/recommendations. Everything tailored, just for you.

Now let’s see how google tracks internet usage – “Ads by Google”. Most of the ads you see over the internet are served by Google’s Ad server. Every ad stores a cookie onto your PC and this helps track the click, the content. All this is done on a very broad scale and the results are generated so that they are fit for a majority of people who fall under the same category. This is where difference sneaks in. Google does not track individuals, it just track the pattern formed by many users and uses that pattern to server ads, which might not be suited for you, but are suited for a majority of population. It works.

What’s the need for a search engine?

Probably you’ve started to notice it. Every single link you share, every single web content you “like/recommend” comes in your facebook search box. So, if you are looking for something that you probably have liked in past, just go to search box and start typing it’s name. You will see it coming there as in the diagram below.

For more details, you can go to “Show All results” and alongwith the things that are related to facebook, you see results from Bing (which as per Google, copies their search result). If this continues to grow, fewer and fewer people will go to Google for searching something, and that will be done only when facebook fails to deliver. So the search for which Google is known, shall be taken by facebook and Google will get only facebook’s leftovers.

Does facebook pose a serious threat to Google’s main source of revenue?

In order to understand this, we first need to figure out what is Google’s main source of revenue. Google’s main source of revenue is Adwords which accounted for USD 23b in 2009 (http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html).

Facebook’s revenues for 2009 were as

$125 million from brand ads
$150 million from Facebook’s ad deal with Microsoft
$75 million from virtual goods
$200 million from self-service ads. (http://www.businessinsider.com/breaking-down-facebooks-revenues-2009-7)

This total amounts to USD 550m or USD 0.55b. Facebook’s total revenue in 2009 is 46 times smaller than the revenue of Google Adwords.’Looking at this figure it is clear that Facebook is not posing a serious threat to Google’s revenue.
Now here is the present scenario. Facebook Like Button on various sites, Facebook places, Facebook questions – Facebook knows which content you like/read, where you visit and what are your doubts. Using this data, Facebook can possibly come up with an Ad Sever that has if not more, equal powers as the Google Ad Servers. If they come up with this, and you start seeing “Ads by Facebook” instead of “Ads by Google”, then the war will get more interesting.

The social web – by Google

In this particular text, I will try to figure out, how the web could be more social with the help of Google. Google already has, and in much better form what facebook is offering – social interaction, videos, emails, news, web search but in separated forms. Things are are at different URLs and one must remember/click/bookmark each location. Let’s say Google comes up with a social web – a portal that is sufficient for all your needs and is social, I would call it GoSocial. It would be a mashup of Google Search, Gmail, Buzz, Picasaweb, Docs, Music Search, YouTube, Blogger, Knol, Groups, Latitude and Maps. So you can upload pictures which will be stored in your picasaweb albums. You can blog and your blogsppot.com address shall be linked to your GoSocial account. You can upload videos on GoSocial and they will be stored and served by YouTube. You can create documents and share them with Google Docs running in the backend. You can interact with groups and can create questions and answers with the Google Groups engine in background. You can create community pages with the help of Knol. You can use Latitude to implement a feature similar to facebook places, even better in some aspects. Maybe, I need to think more so that I can come up with a possible layout of this social web. But this is my general idea. I am a die hard Google fan. Everytime I visit their numerous services, I can picture different modules of a system which is highly social, real time and most important of all is not evil, lying around. In my personal opinion it’s time to come up with a version of web, which is more social and Google, you can do it.

Over the decade, Google has helped build the web, make it safe, clean and present the data in an organized manner to all the inhabitants on the planet. Why let someone else harness it when it essentially belongs to its creator.

There are many more things in my mind to write about, so keep watching for a second part of this post

Facebook autologin with google account

So, are you tired of logging in everytime on facebook? Putting your email id/facebook username and password. Wish there was a secure way in which you would have been automatically logged into facebook? There is! And the way is by connecting facebook and google account (gmail).

It’s pretty simple, safe and secure. All you have to do is to connect your gmail/google account with facebook once. Then everytime you are logged into gmail and open facebook, you will automatically be logged in. What’s more. Even if you try to logout, facebook will relogin you 🙂

Here is how this goes.

Go to find your friends on facebook. It is on the right hand side bar. You will notice something like this. Now enter your gmail ID when asked as shown below.
This will open a pop up as shown below. If you are not already logged into gmail, it will ask you to log in to your gmail account.
After you have logged in, or if you are already logged in, you will see the request from google on behalf of facebook to access your contact information. Below there is a check box about remembering this authorization. Make sure that option is checked for auto login. Don’t worry, I will tell you how to revoke this privilage, if you want to later at the end of this post.
After authentication, you will see a screen which will be something like the one below. This is where facebook has authenticated your google account and is now, fetching your friends who are on facebook. Let facebook do their job.
Now you will find a list of your contacts from your gmail, who are on facebook. If you wish, you can send them a friend request, or you may skip this step.
Now that is all. Your facebook account is connected to your gmail account and you are ready for passwordless login on facebook. To test this, logout of your facebook account, but remain logged in your gmail account. After you have logged out, you will see facebook logging you again into your account. Like the one shown below.
If you ever wish to revoke permissions of facebook from your google account, just go to google.com and click on Google Account Settings.
Next, click on Change Authorized Websites to see the list of websites you have authorized. Find for Facebook there, and click on revoke access. That’s all you have now successfully disconnected facebook and google account.

Managing gtalk status your way

Alright fine, so i have returned after a long time, with another of my post of google talk and gmail. In this post i will tell you how to manage your gtalk status effectively. As you must have read from my previous post of Being invisible in gtalk, there are ways through which you can be invisible in gtalk. Here are some things more.

Being invisible in gMail

Recently gmail has introduced the feature of being invisible. When you change your status you can select invisible. This will make sure that you can see other people who are online and chat with them, but they can’t see you being online.

Showing off your music track in Pigdin

Now, for those who are using google talk on Windows, it is easy to show off their current music track. For those who are using Pidgin on Linux or Windows, there is an add-on that you need to install. Then you can also publicize your music track. Here is the link to download the plugin known as MusicTracker. The project is hosted at Google Code and you can get it from here

Being always idle in google talk

Through a plugin for gtalk called as gAlwaysIdle you can always be in idle status, and thus safely ignore people whom you don’t want to talk to. You can download the plugin from gAlwaysIdle

Bookmarking Gmail 2.0

With the coming of gMail 2.0, many things have changed, like for an instance, the emails are faster, there is a better contact management. However, something that i really liked is that the URLs are different in different case. And hence they can be used as bookmarks in the web browser. Here are some of the URLs.

Inbox. The url for inbox is http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox
Starred. The url for stared items is http://mail.google.com/mail/#starred
Chats. The url for chats is http://mail.google.com/mail/#chats
Sent Items. The URL for sent items is http://mail.google.com/mail/#sent
Drafts. The url for drafts is http://mail.google.com/mail/#drafts
All Mails. The url for all mails is http://mail.google.com/mail/#all
Spam. The url for spam is http://mail.google.com/mail/#spam
Trash. The url for trash is http://mail.google.com/mail/#trash
Contacts. The url for contacts is http://mail.google.com/mail/#contacts
Labels. If you have applied labels to your mails, then the various labels will have the url as http://mail.google.com/mail/#label/LabelName. and the search box will display something like label:LabelName

gTalk tips and tricks

Most of the people who are on Google Talk, use their client, also popularly called as gTalk, to communicate with their friends. In this post, i would like to share with you some tips and tricks about exiting features on gTalk.

1) Listen to FM Radio on gTalk

Yea, that’s true, FM is on your GTalk now (Teen Taal 110,only hindi songs)
For this u need to follow these steps…,

Add this id in ur GTalk: service@gtalk2voip.com
Then add: 110@radio.gtalk2voip.com

After completion of these 2 steps make a call to 110@radio.gtalk2voip.com. Then u will be directly connected to teen taal FM radio station.

Please note that, i am on Linux, i use Pidgin Messenger, and so, i haven’t tried this thing yet. In case, it doesn’t work, do post a comment, but don’t expect too much from my side, although, i will try to figure out what went wrong. In case it does, post the comment, so that others can use it too. If your radio has not started to play in 5 seconds, please drop the call and connect again.

2) Invisible mode login in gTalk

This topic has already been posted, so i would avoid the redundancy. You can view the topic here

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Invisible mode for Google Talk/ XMPP

You must have used the invisible mode on Yahoo Messenger. If you ever wished the same feature for Google talk or any such other XMMP protocol based chat service, the wait is finally over. There have been recent developments in this field and people are coming up with plugins or rather tweaks at this instant of time, which allows to be invisible, while you can still chat, see online people, learn about any new unread email and know when someone scrapped you on orkut.

The Plugin

Manual Way
Here is what you need to do if you want to be invisible. This has been an initial work of Siddharth Upmanyu and we are planning to extend it.

First download Psi IM (0.10) or Miranda IM. For Psi versions later then 0.10 you’ll need to modify the options.xml file to enable Invisible status. In order to learn about how to configure Miranda for google talk account see, this help, or for Psi IM, look here. For detailed instructions to configure PSI, click here.
Now log in as Invisible status provided by the client.
Open the XML Console and inject the following code through it
Repeat the above step whenever you want to refresh the buddy list.. the last line of the code causes the server to return Email Notifications.

We are currently doing the alpha testing, and have plans to release a beta plugin soon.

Detailed configuration in PSI-IM

For those who are new to PSI-IM, here is a brief tutorial on how to be invisible in Google Talk.

For those who are using PSI v 0.11 or above, you need to modify the options.xml file. If you are on Microsoft Windows XP, then you can find the file at C:\Documents and Settings\username\PsiData\profiles\default. If you are on Linux, look into /home/username/.psi/options.xml. Look in for the string invisible and set its value to enable/ true.

Next, login as invisible in PSI.

Next, choose your google talk account and right click to get the XML Console Option. When the XML console is open, don’t forget to check the Enable option in the bottom left. Have a look at images below.

Next, you need to copy the code given above into the input window. Open the XML Console window by pressing th XML Input button on the right bottom. And paste the code as shown below.

After you inject the above code click on “Transmit”, you will see various messages. Don’t worry, they are the status of your buddies. Now close every open window, except for the main window. Now start chatting with your favorite bussy, as normally. You can see the buddy, but s/he will see you as offline.

NOTE::
You have to repeat the above procedure, everytime, you want to get status updates.

The working

When you log in as Invisible the server replies with an error msg saying this mode is not supported. Although you wont receive any buddy list status or other notifications but the server doesn’t disconnects you.

Now when you inject the the XML the server sees you online and replies you with the buddy status of your friends and immediately it sets your status unavailable. The server then sends this packet to your online buddies. GTalk/Other clients when get this packet they set your status On and Off. Usually this transition is so fast that practically you remain offline.

In this Invisible Mode you can start a chat with online friends. However there are some issues with the case when someone tries to send you a message in the first place. Most of the times you do get notification, and hence, you can start chatting directly, however there have been reported cases when it will go as offline message and you will only see it in Email Notification (Google puts an unread Email for the offline 🙂

UPDATE

A way to get invisible mode in Kopete is demonstrated at my latest blog post.