- $580 million paid by NewsCorp for MySpace in 2005
- $6 billion MySpace reportedly worth a year later
- $35 million MySpace sold for yesterday, Wednesday

- $585 million - my guestimate for the cost of development of Google+ to-date (Google's social networking strategy announced the day before MySpace sold)
- 30 work teams, 18 products and "several hundred people" are involved in Google's social networking strategy
- Google+ has these main elements:
    - Circles - arrange friends/contacts in groups
    - Sparks - topics of interest (way to follow news and info)
    - Hangout - online video chat (one of the most promising elements, in my opinion)
    - Mobile/location-based networking
- Product development strategy for Google+ - start by envisioning the end product and then work backwards from there

Vision for Google+?
- Fix the broken online social networking experience
- How?
- Online connections are too "rigid" - i.e. the "subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools."

Phil's take: Phil's take today is about what - with some jest in the naming but not in the underlying idea - I call Phil's law. Quickly stated, Phil's law says that there's an inverse correlation between the speed of scale of a social network and its durability. While I like what I see with Google+ and think they understand some of the problem with online social networks, Google is underestimating the durability of even a "reformed" online social network like theirs. Elements of Google+ will live, especially Hangout (the very compelling video chat service) but Google+ as a social network will either not scale or, if it does, it will eventually fall for the same reason that MySpace did or Facebook will. 

News Corp. Sells Myspace for a Song
The Wall Street Journal
June 30, 2011
http://on.wsj.com/jt8MnU 

Inside Google+ — How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social
Wired
June 28, 2011
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-social/all/1 

Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web
The Official Google Blog
June 28, 2011
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html

News Corporation Buys an Internet Company
The New York Times
July 19, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/business/media/19online.html?scp=4&sq=m...

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