Google Profile?

Web 2.0 refers to what is perceived as a second generation of web development and web design. It is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, User-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications. Examples include social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies.

Although the term suggests a new version of WWW, it does not have any up gradations to technical specifications whereas gives a new tilt to the way end users utilize the web.

Got to Wiki for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Now, do you wonder why am I writing a post on web 2.0 here? The answer is pretty simple. As usual I was exploring one of the features of Google. As a google adherent, I thought of sharing information about Google Profile.

In the current day, we have so many social networking sites bumping each other. LinkedIn is one such site with a different outlook to the SNS .Its a “Professional SNS”.
It’s a place where one can put their professional information there by floating ones information in the WWW.

Orkut on the other hand is a “Personal SNS” with a similar motive.

Today majority of the people ranging from school going kids to elderly people have got them registered in Orkut, LinkedIn, youtube, Picassa, reader, blogger, facebook & so on..

We know most of these products are under the very big umbrella called Google. Now what is different about Google Profile then?

Google Profile can be logged in with the usual gmail account and is built on the “Web 2.0” concept. It’s basically a place where one can register to have public presence. If someone wants to track a person on the web and the person being tracked has a google profile created, everything becomes pretty simple. It has link to all the google products and shows all of those where the logged in member has registered with.

Most of us log into any google related products with the same id. We don’t maintain different ids for different products when they always popularize the product with the fact that one can login if h/she has a gmail account. Thus the web 2.0 concept emerges.

For example, when a person logs into google profile with the gmail id, it shows their blog links, you tube membership details, presence in picassa, any journal membership, orkut, facebook and twitter and so on.


In the past when you did a “Vanity Search” ( if you wanted to be listed in search results for your own name), it would not have showed up the results as expected and often you needed your own website. However in April, Google has started giving Profiles a prominent placement in search results. If you set up an online profile with Google, a person looking for you online will be able to find you more easily. Google will let you know if they need more information before having your profile listed in search results.

Do you want to take a look to see a profile looks like? Search for Tim O'Reilly( web 2.0 guru) on the web.

Read for more details:
http://seodenver.com/2009/05/20/how-to-create-a-google-profile-and-manage-your-online-reputation/

I was very excited to learn about web 2.0 a year and a half back. But when I realized the concept in real-time, I have my own thoughts reserved for this.

I was analyzing the pros and cons of Google profile. I don’t want to discuss about it here as it might be a very good topic in a technical forum.

Although I jotted out many points, my question is still open.” Is Profile a boon or a bane?”