San Francisco — Ever since it launched its promising social networking site Google+, the search engine giant is heading for all things social now. Of late, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Google is reportedly prepping to launch yet another sensational feature for its fans, in the form or a new commenting system to rival Facebook’s across the web, according to a report.
According to rumors swirling around about the third-party comment platform that was first picked up by Tech-WD blogger Saud Al-Hawawi who reported yesterday that several new Google features that have yet to be announced were conversed at the Google event G-Saudi Arabia, including the new commenting platform.
Sites that use comment platforms empower their users to discuss articles and blog posts by signing into third party’s network. Popular social media outfit Facebook is currently dominating the scene, and a move from Google would open up another competitive front for the two.
Google has constantly been manipulating its strategy to provide a social layer to all of its services via its fledgling social platform Google+, which was launched last year and has already been integrated into the Google search algorithm. Now gearing up to rival Facebook, it is hoped to increase the popularity of Google+ by launching a system that will hopefully create a more dominant role regarding online connections.
In fact, the Google comment system, which will almost certainly rival that of Facebook’s widespread commenting system, will have deep links to Google’s network of services and websites, indexing comments in Google Search, and most significantly, the system will be available for use on third party sites, according to the report.
According to reports, Google intends to make the platform available to third parties precisely the same way Facebook offers its platform, wherein visitors to a given website log into Facebook in order to post comments to the site’s articles and content.
You cannot go anywhere these days without running into a site that is using social media network Facebook’s third-party comment platform, and it looks like Google wants in on the action. Widespread speculation suggests that Google might let visitors to websites log into its comment platform through other services, such as Twitter or WordPress.
“However Google configures this, it is clear that it is all about competing with Facebook and keeping users logged into Google’s services,” John Simpson, consumer advocate at Consumer Watchdog, said in a statement. “Google is terrified of Facebook’s gains and is doing everything possible to fight them.”
Besides, some other players in the field are Disqus and Livefyre are not doing too badly either at present. For instance, Livefyre users include AOL, Fox, MTV and The New York Times. The company also partners with WordPress. Users of Disqus include CNN, Time, Fox News and Engadget.
“We are not much aware about Google’s comment system so far, but it feels intuitive that they are pushing Google+ onto websites in similar fashion to Facebook,” Daniel Ha, CEO of Disqus, informed TechNewsWorld. “From our experience…publishers absolutely love the value of social media networks integrated into their communities.”
However, the move is an attempt to further consolidate together Google+ and the rest of the company’s web properties and the internet at large. Also, a rival commenting platform could bolster up the stakes in the competition between Google and Facebook to become one-stop shops for online activity.
According to general statistics, Google+ has topped 90 million registrations, but it is unclear how many are active. Whereas, social media leader Facebook has more than 850 million members and thousands of sites have plugged in its commenting system to their sites.
On the other hand, another fascinating piece of news that Tech-WD has unearthed is that Google+ will be rolling out vanity URLs–a much needed feature, but one which several third party apps already offers Google+ users. This feature has long been on Google’s to-dos, and it seems that it may finally be approaching the top of the list.
Google declined to comment for this story.