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Google's recent additions to services, tools, and interfaces could form the next community platform

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This website, Simply Google (from Confusability) shows just how extensive Google has become with its range of services and tools. Google's software is very well implemented and deployed.

What I'd like to see now is how all these tools fit together, in some sort of diagram. The connections between Google Maps, Google Mail, Google Talk, Google Calendar are clearly signs of how a Google Community platform could exist in the near future. However, it needs some sort of adhesive to join these tools together before this can happen.

Some of the elements are already there:

Identity: Google Mail accounts...
Notification: RSS (XML) connections, in search results... calendar event items... blogs... news
Navigation: Google Search tools which are extensive, including a range of media, text, audio, video, images
Individual space: blogger.com
Some notion of discourse: Google Talk (synchronous) | Google Mail (asynchronous)

This diagram, produced in November 2003 whilst working at Ultralab, shows our thinking about the components of online community software.


larger version

I wonder if Google has a community-ware product in mind or just a strong adhesive?

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