Google Loses Out on Facebook and Goes Maka-Maka

TechCrunch is reporting today that although Google may have lost its bid on Facebook, all is not lost to them in Social Media.

Maka-Maka is Goog's answer to going social:

Maka-Maka encompasses Google’s grand plan to build a social layer across all of its applications. Some details about Maka-Maka have already leaked out, particularly how Google plans to use the feed engine that powers Google Reader (known internally as Reactor) to create “activity streams” for other applications akin to Facebook’s news and mini feeds. But Maka-Maka goes well beyond that.

Maka-Maka will be unveiled in stages. The first peek will come in early November. As we reported previously, Google is planning to “out open” Facebook with a new set of APIs that developers can use to build apps for its social network Orkut, iGoogle, and eventually other applications as well.

Aw, Jeez. Another social network. That's all I need. As if I'm not burned out enough from Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pownce, and every other social site I've joined in the last few years...Will Google's offering out-do all the above, enticing me to abandon every other community?

It's always possible, although personally, I'm not big on Orkut just yet. But as TechCrunch wisely points out, Google's got so much of my info already -- friends on Gmail (including the messaging and Talk apps), my feeds, my personal blog. How hard will it be for them to string all that together with some nice, sticky, Facebook-like technologies?