This week in GOOGLE #23, “What Should Google Do?“

This week in GOOGLE, or TWig, is a podcast covering Google and all thing cloud computing.  Hosted by Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani, and Jeff Jarvis.  Jeff Jarvis, in particular, is the author of What Would Google Do?, blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com, and is associate professor and director of the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism.

This being the first TWig episode of 2010 the discussion is about the future and “what should Google do?”

The team agree that Google doesn’t yet feel professional enough, yet it must expand into the Enterprise area in 2010 as there’s nothing left for it to do but create an Enterprise revenue stream.  But is Google ready for the Enterprise?  The team compare Google with Amazon, and salesforce.com, and decide Google is not as trustworthy (Marc Benioff, CEO salesforce.com, will be absolutely delighted to know he’s being compared with Amazon – Amazon being Marc’s inspiration when formulating salesforce.com …)  Jeff  then celebrates salesforce.com, “salesforce really knows how to serve business … ,” and “knows what a business needs.”  So, Google is going to have to prove that it’s more than merely search and advertising in 2010.

Another programme on worth tracking down is CNBCs “Inside The Mind of Google”

I’ve been listening to several of Leo’s podcasts over many years now.  His TWiT podcast has proven to be essential listening for me at the gym.  So when Leo started TWig – This week in Google (and the Cloud) – I new it would be worth downloading.

Take for example This Week In Google 4: Filers vs. Pilers, it’s probably one of the most accessible of the current series.  The cast is usual suspects: Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani, Jeff Jarvis and the guest, for this session, Kevin Marks (Google: Open Social, and now BT).  It’s talking heads at its best.

Kevin introduces the word phatic, a social scientist term, in relationship to much that is Social Media.  According to Kevin, Social Media is “full of social gestures that are like apes grooming each other.”  That is, full of expressions that only function to perform a social task, rather than to conveying information.

Other nuggets from TWig#4 are that:

• there is a limit (i.e. accessible by API) of 3200 tweets on Twitter
• Google Wave, is best viewed as tool that will support collaborative editing of a stored document – rather than a new email paradigm (Kevin)
• TWig’s has a friendfeed at http://friendfeed.com/twit-twig