This must be Google's Facebook clone. It sure looks like it.
I don't think google will ever win at social, every site that started small changed and adapted to what the users wanted, google can't do that, they launch a new site and bam millions of users instantly; yet all these users want different things, so instead of shaping the experience around what they need to get users (what Facebook did) they're catering to what they think will retain users. They have to find out what users want without the access to "organic" information, market research is proven time and time again to be worthless.The problem of getting users is often one that defines a site, when you don't have that problem it becomes a battle to stop users leaving to better more "mature" pastures. I think the next big social site (if there ever is one) will be a no-name small-gone-big site, but even then with how everyone (users) is about social now (they want to be instantly in on the next big thing) I doubt that can happen. I think that maybe Facebook is the end of social sites, which feels strange and ridiculous to say, but maybe.Google will never "get" social, there is nothing to get.Edit: in fact I think a great example of this is Google Wave. It was a fantastic product for a variety of tasks, project management was one, yet Google pitched it as the "next big thing" to users so they all joined with ridiculous expectations of what it was and wasn't and now look what happened... Tumblr is another great example in the other direction, what the site is now is very community orientated, yet from the interviews I've seen with the founder (David something) it didn't seem as if this was intention from the get go, yet users used the site like that and so they adapted and enabled users to use it like that. Now look, they're huge. Does anyone know of any products launched by big companies (Google, Microsoft etc.) that did go big? I can't think of any off hand, would be interesting to look at how they grew and developed.