The inspiration for this article has been taken from the LinkedIn content calendar.  Each month, LinkedIn release a topic along with a hashtag, and your challenge is to create an article around the topic.  The challenge for October is:

An Open Letter to… which issue would you champion with an open letter?  Share the dialogue you would start with, and industry peer or competitor. #Openletter

Dear Google and Facebook,

A mentor once told me that you should explore new avenues for business, but always stay true to what you are good at.  Google, you are amazing at search!  Over 90% of internet searches are now conducted on your platform and this is because you give your customers what they want.  In your eyes, it is all about the customer and this methodology has given you credibility where everyone else has failed, particularly in search.  Your eco-system is amazing (especially with the new edition of Google home and the new Google Phone) and the data that you hold on the world is a little bit scary, but it is in essence, the perfect business model.

But Google, please don’t do social!

One thing that you are not good at is social networking, please leave this to the experts.  Not only have you wasted millions of dollars on Google Buzz, Google Wave and Google Plus, you have also wasted lots of your customers’ time and money.  Books have been written on social products that no longer exist, time has been wasted by your customers setting up profiles and learning a whole new language. So, please Google, stick with what you are good at, and that is search.

Facebook, please learn from the search experts!

Dear Facebook, my message to you is clear.  You may have won the battle with YouTube on video, and you may nearly have tipped SnapChat (now SnapInc) out of the social networking market, and with the new Facebook Marketplace we may see a war starting with eBay or Amazon, but please do not try to compete with Google when it comes to search.

You are the number one business when it comes to social, and the growth of your own eco-system amazes me week on week.  People are at the heart of what you do, and giving us the tools to communicate in the way you do, along with new sexy tools such as augmented technology, 360 audio on images and shopping at your fingertips are certainly the way forward, but your search filters are not the best.  You have tried on numerous occasions, but it has just never happened.  In my opinion, you were just a bit late to the party.

Google and Facebook, my message to you is clear.  Stick with what you are good at.  Google stay with search, and Facebook please stay with social.

Your friend and geek

Julia Doherty

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