A month and a half ago, I wrote about social links I saw on Twitter. The post ended up being in the top 5 of my posts on twitter.hyveup.tv. Unfortunately, the links on the Twitter profile I was referring to disappeared a few days after I wrote the article. I was smart enough to capture my discussion with the owner of the profile I was referring to, but not smart enough to capture the links.
Well this week I stumbled upon some of those again, and here’s what it looks like:
Since my last post about it, I have been wondering if Twitter testing social links is not an attempt to compete against Google’s profiles. Why? It seems like there is a race going on right now to win people’s trust in terms of online identity. If I do a search about you, where should I start?
Starting with Twitter is a better idea than starting with Google’s profiles, since it is the page I update the most. But Google is just starting in the online networking space, and it hasn’t integrated people’s profiles with Friendconnect. It makes sense that those two services should merge at one point or the other.
The social aspect of the Web is the big trend of the 2.0. We search for others online. So far, the best solution to find other people online is Facebook: It is the only place where everyone is registered with their real name. Its people search engine is pretty powerful, compared to Google approximate search results. But things could change. Here is how the services mentioned above differentiate themselves in the online profile space:
Facebook – Precise, real name, private
Twitter – Precise, nickname, public
Google – Vague, nickname, public
What do you think about this?