As the War Between Facebook and Google Heats Up, Zynga is Just One of Many Battles

Track the recent stories about Facebook, MySpace, and Google and you may see an intriguing pattern developing. As covered by Andrew Wee, there are rampant rumors that Google made a major investment in Zynga. The rumor-mill has also focused on “Google Me,” a supposed Facebook rival that’s secretly in the works. Meanwhile, rumors about the sale of MySpace are simultaneously circulating. Coincidence? Well, ask skeptics and they’ll tell you they don’t believe in coincidence.

MySpace, Jonathan Miller, digital chief of News Corp., owner of the flagging social network, said at a media conference last week, “We are definitely not in any ongoing talks for a sale of MySpace.” Instead, Miller said, the site will re-launch later this year, whatever that means.

Let’s take that at face value and, for the moment, put MySpace aside (with due respect, just about everyone is putting MySpace aside these days).

Consider the Google Me rumor. Google Me could be viewed as a logical progression from Google Profile and Google Buzz. Google Profile was originally positioned by Google as “how to present yourself on Google products to other Google users.” In addition to text and photos, a user can link to blogs and a Facebook profile. Google Profile, however, became something much more social when it showed up in search results for someone’s name. In fact, if you search on your own name and you don’t have a Google Profile, a Google ad will show up at the top of the page encouraging you to create one.

In February, Google Buzz came along. Google described it as “a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting.” Google Buzz was built into Gmail, but Buzz updates are also posted on a user’s Google Profile and are immediately indexed for Google Search.

Hmmm, what’s going on here? It looks very much like the not-so-subtle beginnings of a Google social network. Add in Zynga, which as Andrew Wee points out, “is aimed directly at Facebook and the escalating war between the two,” and things get all the more interesting.

But it turns out that Google already owns a social network called Orkut, named after its founder, a Google employee. The problem is Orkut’s biggest user base is in Brazil and India. But now those markets are up for grabs. According to The New York Times, Facebook is “pulling even with Orkut in India, where only a year ago, Orkut was more than twice as large as Facebook. In the last year, Facebook has grown eightfold, to eight million users, in Brazil, where Orkut has 28 million.” It would be a tough sell to grow Orkut’s critical mass to global proportions.

Facebook doesn’t seem to be too worried about Google’s social media initiatives, but the opposite may be true of Google. Todd Dagres, a co-founder and partner at Spark Capital, which has invested in Twitter, tells The New York Times:

“There is nothing more threatening to Google than a company [Facebook] that has 500 million subscribers and knows a lot about them and places targeted advertisements in front of them. For every second that people are on Facebook and for every ad that Facebook puts in front of their face, it is one less second that people are on Google and one less ad that Google puts in front of their face.”

Add advertising to the mix and of course, the battle intensifies.  Things get even murkier. Read CT Moore’s analysis and you’ll see why.

When it comes to social media, Facebook is a global powerhouse. About 70 percent of its half-a-billion users are outside of the United States. At the moment, Facebook is generated about $1 billion of revenue annually. That’s too big a market to ignore. So what is Google doing? Getting into social media.

Oh yes, and when it comes to search, Google is the undisputed leader. So what is Facebook doing? Getting into search, possibly. While Facebook denies it, some believe their Open Graph-enabled web pages mark the beginning of an effort to challenge Google’s search superiority.

Let’s face it – Facebook is to social media what Google is to search. Whatever strategic moves either party makes, chances are it will stay that way – at least for a while.

About Barry Silverstein

Barry Silverstein is a freelance writer/marketing consultant. In addition to writing for ReveNews, he is a contributing writer to Brandchannel.com, the world’s leading online branding forum. He is the author of three marketing books, The Breakaway Brand (co-author, McGraw-Hill, 2005), Business-to-Business Internet Marketing (Maximum Press, 2003) and Internet Marketing for Technology Companies (Maximum Press, 2003). Barry ran his own Internet and direct marketing agency for twenty years. You can find Barry on Twitter @bdsilv.

Website: http://www.barrysilverstein.com