NewsroomBattle for social networking market continuesInternet giants are still scrapping to become the dominant force in the social network business. On Tuesday 9 February 2010, Google announced that it would trying to join the fight again by adding new features to its widely-used Gmail including status updates and collective contact adding.According to experts speaking in the Financial Times (FT), these plans are Google’s attempt to counter the emerging threat Facebook poses to some of its main services. “Anything Google does with Gmail should be seen as a defensive manoeuvre,” Ray Valdes, global technology analyst, told FT, “In non-work settings, the trajectory favours Facebook. Increasingly, people are staying inside the social networking sites.” Reports suggest that any company that could turn the tables of Facebook in terms of offering a better, free, networking tool while also being more commercially viable could dominate a huge portion of internet capital.So far Google has tried and failed to carve a significant presence in the social networking market.According to Valdes, exploiting the popular Gmail service to springboard its latest foray into social networking highlights the search company’s earlier failures to enter the sector. However, it could also be a very wise move as the email service has 150million users a month. Google’s Orkut social networking service, which was launched prior to Facebook, was a huge success in Brazil but failed to create global appeal and its purchase Jaiku, similar to Twitter, was pointless after soon it scrapped the service.
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