Google Should Be Targeting The Unlit Social Graph

Ever since Google launched its Facebook Like +1 recommendation button, super smart people have weighed in with a number of suggestions on what Google needs to do to succeed in social, especially now that we realise the +1 button isn’t the answer even if it could be a nice monetisation boost.

Talk intensified after Larry Page took the CEO reigns last week and things really heated up when it was reported that Page is doubling down on social, and tying employees’ bonus fortunes to it.

We all know what Facebook has done for the obvious social graph and what Google has done for search: commoditised it and made money out of it.

But what about the less obvious social graph, the connections between people that aren’t family, close friends and colleagues?

Mining the deep, dark web

Lawrence Coburn delves into this on The Next Web blog, with an assist from forward thinker John Battelle.

Coburn cites examples such as his large network of pick-up basketball players in San Francisco that is hidden from the social web. It’s a place-based network of people, known only by first names. Tracking them down on Facebook isn’t really practical.

Here’s another example. My daughter is in a Girl Scout troop and I’ll be darned if she knows two of the group’s last names.

The leader of the troop is constantly calling my wife to coordinate things. These girls are perfectly capable of networking on their own, even if they need rides here or there. What if there was a social network to handle this sort of less permanent, or even ad-hoc networking?

Coburn wrote:

Much like the Dark Web, there exists network upon network not yet graphed by Facebook, waiting to be mapped, organised, and optimised for communication. This is the unlit social graph, and this is where Facebook is vulnerable.

Local interests

As Coburn noted, Google has invested tremendous resources in indexing hidden pieces of content, mining the deep, dark web for troves of info.

Google could certainly create a mobile application that solves this problem for users, and not just pick-up basketball or Girl Scout troops. It would be like Latitude, but with semi-anonymous people glued not by friendships, but by local interests.

Imagine Tupperware party groups, La Leche League groups, model-building hobbyists and other social functions where people are friendly but not necessarily friends.

Color is touching on the ad-hoc, elastic network for photo-sharing, but we could use a little love by mining the deep, or dark web Google is known for trying to drill down into.

This could be Google’s entree to the social networking realm that doesn’t require bolted on +1 buttons, social search and other areas where Google has to beg people to set up Google Profiles.