Google Calendar Communities vs. Spam and Stalkers
Google has just released the long awaited Google Calendar!

A note about some of the features:

• It's free
• You can make a calendar completely public
• From the SearchEngineWatch review (link at end of this article): "every event on calendar has a web page associated with it" ... "a sort of 'mini-blog associated with an event,' where people can leave comments, respond to others and so on."

That’s the good news...

To me this says one thing: new spam.

I'm anticipating a form of spam comparable to splogs and spam blog postings. While searching Google Calendar is currently limited to other users, it's a safe bet it won't stay that way for long, at least not on a practical level.

Anything public will get spidered both by the other search engines and by non-search engine websites. The non-search engine websites will in turn be picked up by search engines, including Google itself.

Not Web 2.0

Although Google Calendar is lush with Ajax interactivity, this will not be part of the Web 2.0 trend. Spam will remove the usefulness of searching the collective pool of publicly shared calendars.

Unlike normal web sites, calendars are very time sensitive. This means that any decent spam-producing robot can keep up better than people. The result is more garbage than useful info in the publicly searchable arena. If you've used eBay lately you can see how companies already outpace individuals in overloading crap in a time-sensitive environment. Imagine this times 50 with robots on Google Calendar.

A Warning to Parents

This must be said: Your children think they are invulnerable and they will likely use this tell all strangers where they are at all times. If you're scared, and you should be, by the stories about how your daughter's MySpace profile makes her an easy target by predators, just imagine how much more true it is after she details out her entire schedule, including the names of the exact places, then shares THAT with the whole world…

Now, back to calendar spam:

Communities, Not Society

Spam won't nullify the usefulness of all Google Calendar sharing though. The über-popular social aspects will be replaced by a communal flavor. The community isn't about a mass of semi-connected people. It is focused on the people you really know. (This is something that people will understand if they have 15 friends on MySpace and are less likely to understand if they have 315.)

Community calendars will be extremely useful where there's trust. Businesses can use them internally for all employees. Professors can show students when they're available for help. Hotels, nightclubs, and sports complexes can manage bookings. Friends can share schedules with other friends. Trust, not anonymity, will be the backbone of community calendars.

Overall, I'm pleased with the potential that Google Calendar shows. I'm not going ga-ga over it like most blogs out there, but hey, it's head and shoulders above Google Reader.

As promised: here is a good review of Google Calendar at SearchEngineWatch by Chris Sherman.
Robert McRackan | permalink | +marktd |