Laurent Kretz

I commented yesterday on a TechCrunch France post: Everything you always wanted to know about Google… (here in French). My point was basically, as it’s been the subject here and there over the last months, that Google is everywhere and all over my life online. Even offline actually. Allen Stern from CenterNetworks sums it quite well here.

I am myself actively using Gmail, Search, AdSense, trying AdWords for CabEasy.com, Alerts, Analytics, Calendar, Product Search quite often to benchmark prices, Chrome for 90% of my browsing, Docs and Spreadsheets, FeedBurner, Groups, Image search, Local search on my blackberry, Maps as a user and as an API service for CabEasy, Reader, Talk, Video and YouTube.

20 Google products every single day! I actually didn’t really realize it until now… And among those 20 products, 10 have no competitors in my daily online activity. By competitor, I mean that I only use this service and no others to achieve something - e.g. I only use Google search, never Ask, Yahoo, …

I came to realize recently that I am almost in the same situation with Facebook.

I like Facebook. I use it all the time. I predicted “the end of it” to my friends a couple of times, and have been proven wrong each time. I like Facebook for various reasons: functionally it answers many of my needs, and technically it’s quite beautiful.

Functionally, Facebook is almost a single destination for everything “social”.

I use the status updates way more than Twitter, because Facebook has 100M mainstream users, and amongst them, 95% of my real-life long-time friends. Twitter is cool, but none of my non-web-related friends use it (I’m french, many of my friends are in France, and Twitter’s penetration is limited). Besides, the commenting and linking to profiles is perfect. The only thing missing is RSS feeds and search.

I use Facebook messages more and more, especially for friends/people out of my top 10 gmail contacts, and people I don’t contact professionally. I’m actually pretty much sure that the email address people use in Facebook is more up-to-date than my regular email contact list.

I use Facebook Friends manager to create lists of friends and groups for specific communications and follow-ups. Why? Because it gives a sense of trust and social proof for communications (when you can see the members of a group, a fan page,) and because Twitter groups have never really came to life for follow-ups.

I almost only upload pictures to Facebook anymore, because my pictures get a real social life once uploaded. I can tag my friends, and it gets a viral effect, people comment, people exchange, an uploaded picture gets some primetime in my news feed, … Something Flickr doesn’t offer.

I use Facebook groups more and more. It’s nothing compared to Google Groups, but it’s a there and I use it.

And finally, I attended already a few Facebook created events. It’s nothing close to Meetups, but again, it’s there and I use it.

And I started testing Ads.

Boom. That’s 7 services that directly or indirectly compete - or complement - Gmail, Twitter, Plaxo and LinkedIn, Flickr, Google Groups, Meetups and Google AdWords.

And finally, technically, Facebook is quite an achievement. Some of the above listed companies do their specific job much better than Facebook, but Facebook does a great - or  amazing - job at all of them. Add the Facebook App platform and Facebook Connect to this, and honestly, for company that launched less than 5 years ago, it’s impressive.

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