Fluff piece with no info.

Here is the problem that I have with google trying to "go social" (Disclaimer, I don't have an FB account - so I am not intended target)

First, social apps are designed around the idea that you have a common portal with which to share information among people you know - or at least have some common thread with, and interest etc..

They are also inherently services that only work online -- meaning, you don't get any value out of a standalone desktop app that is not connected to the activities and information dumping of others.

The services a centered around a user profile, with different containers for various information about your interests, connections to others and content you produce such as comments and pictures. Both of which connect you further to others.

With 500 million users, a platform for delivering apps/games and the prospect of soon providing voip services, facebook is in the most solid position it can be in.

Facebook is a walled garden though.

Google should be going after, and seeking to purchase Linkedin. It should stop worrying about facebook all together here is why:

Google already provides services and technology that better map to corporate communal needs than casual friendships.

Email, docs, apps, search, indexing appliances, etc are all tools that are already in use by and supporting of businesses.

Technology infrastructure is a massive expense, and it is for the most part a liability expense to most companies who's core production is not centered around technology/data.

If you can provide what is effectively a wholly hosted corporate compute cloud environment that offers massively popular productivity solutions built on world class infrastructure know-how then you can affect every small and medium size business that exists.

Google should focus on business productivity tools and the corporate social network. By buying linked, and expanding on it's capability - you get the profile page of the users with extremely useful information.

You can provide the corporate tools of email and document creation.

Provide access to financial processing services (Buy Square) and provide all the effective suite of business tools required.

You then can provide a channel for all other services to cater to, sell into, advertise etc.. that business market.

Add features to the Linkedin profiles -- this is a huge one. There are so many but here is a list of a couple:

You can provide tools that help organizations roll out information and services to their users. Collaboration and project management and tracking tools as a part of the Linkedin profile portal.

Distribute training materials to the users, take polls etc.

Facebook can never reach into enterprise - but linkedin and google can. They can even disrupt it -- with existing offerings better thought out.

You have a layered and tabbed portal. The user profile is the new home directory. Each department has a tab with which that user can interact with available information they have access to in that department.

You can quickly form teams that get created around a project - associated tools and files get tagged to that team as they work on it.

Google buys up small companies that contribute to this ecosystem. Fosters a platform for business productivity applications and sales.

Provides all the tools necessary for a small company to work, produce, host and sell their products and services - through a single integrated, hosted portal.

Doesnt matter what screen you view from, laptop, desktop, mobile etc.. you can always have a view into your corprate systems and info.

etc.. I think you guys get the idea.