More intrigue about Google's supposedly new social networking service "Circles". There was previous speculation that they were working on a 'Facebook killer' social networking service called "Google Me". The same thing? I would imagine they'll want to kill the hype after the raging success of Google Wave. Seems we may have to wait until May to find out more.
Is Google making another attempt at joining the social networking field? Maybe. Maybe not.
Google said it was not launching anything this week at the high-profile South by Southwest Interactive event in Austin, Texas. Moreover, such a product is not even under development, according to the people supposedly developing it.
A report on Read Write Web said the service will offer photo, video and status message sharing. Everything users share on Circles will be shared only with the most appropriate circle of social contacts in their lives, not with all your contacts in bulk.
They said the service has been developed with extensive participation by Chris Messina, the co-creator of numerous successful social and software phenomena online, from BarCamp to Hashtags.
But Messina had another opinion. He said that he “didn’t know what the story was talking about.”
Google has launched many different social efforts over the years but has remained far behind Facebook and Twitter in its efforts. Reports emerged last June that Google has been working on a secret social project called Google Me. In December a screenshot was leaked to TechCrunch showing a new toolbar item on Google.com called "Loop."
According to All Things Digital, Tim O’Reilly, a well-known technology pundit, had seemingly confirmed the existence of Circles by tweeting “I’ve seen google circles, and it looks awesome.”
O’Reilly later deleted the tweet and clarified via email:
“It’s not a product, per se, and it’s not a new social network. Just some research-y thinking about how you could better manage social data. Exactly what Chris said. I got fooled by the RWW story into thinking that they’d turned it into something they were going to announce. There’s no story here. Just some labs stuff.”
After the ReadWriteWeb report came out, Google rebutted its claims: “We’re not launching any products at SXSW.”
Thenextweb.com supports the theory that Google Me is imminent. They reported on Friday they received word that Google was to launch a new social network from Google I/O in May at the company’s annual developer event. With a March roll-out highly unlikely, it suggests that Google Me/Google Circles will indeed launch in the coming months.
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