It has been rumoured since essentially the dawn of time that Google Inc. is going to launch a social network. Although many of Google’s products, such as Picasa, YouTube, and Buzz include social elements, the search giant has yet to launch a full-on Facebook competitor.
The rumours thus far have focused on a mythical entity called Google Me, however this morning ReadWriteWeb claimed the service is actually called Google Circles, and it launching today at SXSW in Austin, Texas. The product, which would apparently offer a targeted way of sharing links, photos and videos amongst friends and co-workers, has apparently been developed in secret by a Google-assembled super-group consisting of social guru Chris Messina, and CEO of recent Google acquisition Piknik, Jonathan Sposato.
Seemingly lending some credence to the rumour, O’Reilly media founder Tim O’Reilly tweeted shortly after the ReadWriteWeb piece went live: “I’ve seen Google circles, and it looks awesome. Tip of the iceberg too.” The tweet has since disappeared.
When asked to comment on the speculation by Network Effect, a Google spokesperson specifically denied that they would be previewing Circles at SXSW, but did not deny the existence of the service.
How Circles would be able to differentiate itself from the melee of other social products currently crowding the market is unclear, however it would need to gain some serious traction to compete with the omnipresent behemoth of Facebook. The name seems to suggest the service would allow different social circles to be managed within the service – this certainly sounds appealing to someone who uses Facebook for their real friends, LinkedIn for their colleagues and Twitter for everyone else. How Google’s service would integrate with those three would be key – and perhaps something of a thorny subject given Google’s continuing spat with Facebook over data privacy.
