Googler Niniane Wang's "Social Application" + MySpace Partnership
Ionut Alex. Chitu at Google OS looks at Google's use of Niniane Wang as a Wired magazine advertisement for attracting smart people to Google.

He dug up her resume somewhere.

I find her current "social application" project interesting in light of speculations regarding Google and MySpace:

11/2005 - present, Tech lead, confidential project
* Envisioned and chartered a confidential project in the social application space. Spec'ed out vision and got buy-in from execs.
* Led a team of engineers through technical design and implementation of client (C++) and server (Java).
* Convinced artists, PM, UI designer, and engineers around the company to join the team or contribute 20% time.

I doubt this is a "MySpace killer" as Ionut Alex. Chitu suggests at the end of his post. However, given Eric Schmidt's increasing interest in all things social this could point to a significant, well, social application.

And it required a UI designer... so it's got a... a USER INTERFACE.

I'm tech-dumb - can anyone fabricate any wild surmising from any of the other achievements she mentions?

Also... what would MySpace make of its potential partner venturing (well... venturing beyond Orkut) into its territory? (And will we see in Base a significant personal/social aspect? Beyond romance of course ;)

Sorry to drag you into all this Ms. Wang. I suspect what you're doing has very little to do with MySpace but I obsessively draw connections sometimes. I won't, as Google OS did, link to your personal blog. Though I did read through a few posts looking for clues ;)

And don't feel shy about commenting in Search Engine Lowdown. Mr. Cutts did recently so there's no shame in it :)

One more thing... based on how Battelle describes Larry and Sergey in the Search - and the value they gave to algorithms - I wonder if Schmidt's increasing media presence and the company's recent emphasis on the social web indicate a shift in power at Google?
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |