Integration - The Key to Google as a Social Network

Google has or is working on pretty much all of the main ingredients for a really great social network. The problem (in my opinion) is that they are scattered and not integrated as well as they could be. Do you particiapte in any of Google's social projects?here) that you can already do with Gmail.

    - send messages to friends

    - keep conversations with multiple friends together

    - embed videos/rich media in emails/chat messages

    - send messages to people beyond the Gmail wall

    - use search operators to bring up all photos /other media from any past messages

    - Account holders have profile pages with their picture

    - Creating a Google account essentially gives you an account to a much broader range of products in Google itself that allow for sharing things with friends (such as Docs, Reader, and Bookmarks)

Google Wave
Google Wave is a little confusing at first glance, but Jordan Golson at GigaOm calls it the closest thing Google has to Facebook. Google calls it "a personal communication and collaboration tool" with the current incarnation being a "very early form."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ
This thing was made by the creators of Google Maps. It's going to be interesting to see where it goes. It has received a lukewarm response thus far, but we'll see what happens.

Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Conect is Google's way of connecting users through other sites that aren't owned by Google. It comes equipped with gadgets such as a event gadget that lets you coordinate events with friends, something you can do with Google Calendar also, by the way.

Web Elements - Conversation Element

Besides here. The Google Social Web Blog looks at one element in particular - the conversation element, which is powered by Google Friend Connect. It lets your visitors post comments restricted to just your site or participate in a global conversation based on topic of interest. That is interesting. Google
commenting feature, and a

More recently, they have pointed out the ability to create and YouTube

YouTube is often thought of as a video site, and it happens to also be ttesting realtime updates. They are also finally made it pretty clear that we're going be seeing some more in the way of real-time search coming from Google. Well, that's one of (not the only one, granted) the big appeals to Twitter. We don't know what is going to come of this yet as far as Google's concerned, but you can expect something.
Photo via Loic Le Meur
iGoogle and the Google Profile

I think these two elements are the real keys to integration of social activity through Google. If Google and users want to tie all of Google's social elements together, I think it's going to be through their iGoogle page and through their Google Profile. One appealing thing about both of these, is that neither one has to be limited to only Google's social elements.

Google has a tremendous advantage with iGoogle, because it is designed to be the home page, and no doubt many people (myself included) use it as the home page in their browser (not just for Google).
directory of gadgets that can be added to preference - and that directory keeps growing. Most of Google's products have gadgets. If you want to bring together your social Google experience to one home base, this is the most likely place that is going to happen.

Then of course, you have the Google Profile, the page that really ties your Google experience together from the backend. This is what you log in to every time you use a Google service, regardless of which you actually log in from (there may be exceptions). You can add any links to this page that you want (and I suspect that there will be a lot more customization options available in the future). Recently

Google made some big moves with the profile. For one, adding profiles right into regular Google searches for names. Considering that Google is the largest search engine in the world by a very large margin, that's going to give those profiles some pretty significant exposure.
"interest-based" advertising, and you have to wonder if they'd ever consider displaying ads on iGoogle...or the profile. iGoogle being the starting point for the user (in many cases), and the profile being outsiders' gateway to finding friends.

Conclusion

Basically, my point to all of this (and has been for some time) is that Google is building a social network right under us. Many Google users will find themselves social network users without even realizing it, and Google will have to be included in the conversation of top social networks. And Google is a beast to compete with, I'm sure We would love to hear them