Exclusive: First Look At Genome, A Next-Gen Social Networking Service
What are the number one problems facing today's social networks? According to the young developer Vladislav Chernyshov they are: privacy issues, distraction and time-wasting, quantity over quality, ads, and lack of control over your identity. That's why he, Dmitry Gorpinchenko, and Andrew Chernyh, all students at Novosibirsk State Technical University (NSTU) in Russia, have founded Genome, an upcoming next-generation social networking service which addresses the main problem of Web 2.0: the ever-increasing quantity of Web 2.0 resources and the lack of tools to manage them.
What's Genome?
So, what, exactly is Genome, then? Well, it's not really just one thing - it's four:
- Social Network: Genome a social network like any other. You'll have a user profile, friends, and tools that let you social with them in comfortable, natural ways.
- Contact Manager: You'll be able to keep track of your contacts' information on Genome.
- Instant Messenger: Genome will provide an open instant messenger that's integrated with your contacts.
- Identity & Social Graph Provider: Genome will have an open identity policy so your Genome identity is easily sharable with other sites. That means that other sites and services can query Genome for some pieces of your personal information.
The Genome project has only been in development for three months and most of the details on how it operates, technically speaking, are being kept quiet. However, we got a look at some of their plans as well as some screenshots of the mobile app.
What Genome Is Not
Genome is not an aggregator spock.com profiles or FriendFeed. Genome can function as your central identity, not a collection of your identities out on the web nor a collection of your social web activities.
It's not a competitor to other data portability movements like Facebook Connect, MySpace's Data Availability, or Google Friend Connect. Instead, Genome will work cooperate with them to give users control over their own data. To do so, Genome will not use any closed, proprietary protocols - only open standards.
What Genome Will Let You Do
Because it will use open protocols, the goal is to let users carry their identites anywhere on the web. Updates made to those identities out on the web will make their way back to Genome instead of users having to return to Genome to edit their profiles.
You'll be able to access Genome's service from a web app, a desktop client (they have a Windows, Mac, and Linux client planned), and a mobile app. A Google Android client has already been built, too. In fact, Genome's creators are particularly focused on the mobile market and are working on real-time sync and location awareness in this area. Of course, developers will also be able to build their own web apps and clients thanks to Genome's open standards and API.
We got a sneak peek at the Android app, but be warned, the app is still very much in alpha and may change a lot prior to launch:
To deal with "noise" Genome is implementing something they're calling a "real-life relationships" model. In your real life, says co-founder Chernyshov, "you can control who knows what about you, and you can control what you know about them." Those granular relationships will be available on Genome, yet kept as simple as possible.
How You'll Use Genome (At First)
There aren't too many details on the specifics of how you will use Genome or the technical details as to how Genome operates, but we do that the first public release will only be the beginning of their effort to solve all the problems noted at the beginning of this post. The first iteration of Genome will be focused on the problem of identity management.
In the area of contact and identity management, the problems that Genome wants to solve specifically include the following: you can't import or export data on today's social networks, you can't control who sees what about you, you can't watch who knows what about you, and you can't ask a new web service to retrieve your name, email, contacts, etc. from a social network site. Well, as for that last issue, data portability is supposed to address this, but perhaps Genome's creators aren't interested in waiting for the major providers to make it work.
To start off, you'll be able to import your address book contacts and (possibly) import friends from various social networks. (They aren't sure if they will have that feature ready for the first public launch or not). However, they do plan on supporting Google Friend Connect and, further down the road, they will offer automatic contacts discovery.
Once you add a contact to Genome, it's yours - it's not locked in any way. Unlike a network like Facebook, for example, who locks in your contacts so you have to keep using their walled garden service, the data from Genome can be freely moved about the web. If you add someone to Genome then invite them to join the service, their profile will be automatically linked with the contact you've already created. The details don't need to be re-entered.
Other Issues Being Addressed
As the Genome project progresses, future versions of the service will focus more on privacy concerns, distractions, quality interactions, and advertisements. (More details can be found on this post about Genome.) How these issues will be dealt with is currently under wraps.
Privacy: Privacy levels will be set up to mirror real-life relationships: spouse or significant other, family, best friend, friend, buddy, colleague, business partner, high school acquaintance, contact, etc. Human relationships have detailed nuances - social networks should, too.
Distractions: Social networks today are bogging us down with messages, invitations, pokes, and friend requests. Some of these matter, some of these waste our time, but how can we pay attention to only the really important things? Genome plans to address this.
Quality Issues: The more "friends" you have, the less rich the interactions and the relationships you maintain with your friends on your social networks. Interactions become one-way, more similar to RSS than to real relationships.
Ads: Today's ads are often irrelevant, usually unwanted, and sometimes even inappropriate. Even targeted ads seem to miss the mark. If Genome truly has a solution for this problem, that will be extremely impressive.
Conclusion
At the moment, Genome sounds almost too good to be true - a social networking service that solves all our problems? Nevertheless, it's certainly intriguing. If it can really do what it proposes to do, then it's worth signing up for (sign-up is here).
Genome launches into private beta on October 1st, 2008.
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Comments
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Looks awesome!
Posted by: tyler | July 8, 2008 12:40 PM
is this an ad?
Posted by: Michael | July 8, 2008 12:43 PM
Sarah,
Thank you for the covering. It is a fascinating article.
Invited by Vlad, I am currently helping the design of Genome service. In our mind, the service would be something unlike any of the current social networking sites. We are trying to rethink what social networking is really about. With the thoughtfully rethinking, we are approaching a new route that is different from any of the current social networking sites. Hence it is for sure that Genome is not a copycat of MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, or any other current SNS you name it.
We are projecting an old goal, but with new philosophy of combining things to solve the essential pain for the current social networking users. I may not be able to reveal more details at this moment. But the service is certainly not too good to be true, if we can just look at everything from a different angle.
Again, thank you for the covering and it is an excellent writing, as you always do.
Yihong
Posted by: Yihong Ding | July 8, 2008 12:51 PM
Why o why pick a word like Genome for the name that has a meaning in a different context and gerzillions of websites already using the name?
Posted by: jenjen | July 8, 2008 1:11 PM
While it looks a lot like Yoono, which I decided was not worth using, I'm looking forward to testing this out.
Posted by: Sergio Cruz
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July 8, 2008 1:51 PM
I hope they're better at programming than they are at designing logos...
Posted by: wack | July 8, 2008 2:30 PM
"If Genome truly has a solution for this problem, that will be extremely impressive."
That kind of sums up the post, innit?
Posted by: deemeetree | July 8, 2008 2:44 PM
If, if, if, if, gunna, gunna, gunna, gunna
Its not about "if" or "gunna" (aka going to) do something
Seems like they are basically "gunna" do everything.
I think focusing on too many things, and not solving one thing well is going to be the problem of this service.
You cant have you cake, and eat it too.
Goodluck though.
Posted by: Fred | July 8, 2008 3:41 PM
The first thing these guys have to do is to change their Site's name as it is really confusing. Gnome, Genome, etc. for me is a Linux Desktop Environment.
Posted by: Tarek | July 8, 2008 4:27 PM
The strength of my desire for this app(and it is strong)is inversely proportional to my actual ability to create content of value to anyone. I wonder if I am typical in this?
Posted by: calebism | July 8, 2008 5:14 PM
Uau! Its new idea! Cool. I think its future.
Posted by: Werbung Hamburg | July 8, 2008 6:10 PM
Super! Want itself such
Posted by: unnhost | July 8, 2008 6:34 PM
Thank you all for your comments, both negative and positive.
Sarah,
Thank you very much for this great article!
tyler,
Thank you, Tyler!
Michael,
This is not an ad. Sarah found us and offered the interview. We were really surprised.
jenjen, Tarek,
Thank you for your criticism. Let me answer you. Why "Genome"? Genome is the complete set of genes in a particular organism. This means that human genome contains all information about human body.
Our play on the term reflects our passion to give you ability to actually OWN your whole identity across the web and in real life.
Sergio Cruz,
I took a look at Yoono. We have nothing in common with them. Thanks!
wack,
Do you want to suggest a better logo? Feel free to drop me a line.
deemeetree, Fred,
Thank you for you reprimand! ;) I think you are absolutely right. You must understand that we are in early alpha stage now. Besides, many of the problems are interconnected. If you got a solution for one, others will be eliminated automatically. Basically, we do identity and relationships management.
calebism,
I'm not sure I understand you. If you have something in mind, feel free to drop me a line at vlad@genomepeople.com
Werbung Hamburg,
Thank you very much!
unnhost,
Thanks!!!
To everyone,
If you have something in mind: ideas, questions, feature requests, whatever, feel free to drop me a line at vlad@genomepeople.com. I really want to hear from you.
Thank you again Sarah, thank you all for your comments!
I also want to thank our designers: Rederick Asher and Vladimir Tatarovich. Rederick is responsible for logo design and icons for our Google Android app. And Vladimir is responsible for the app's design.
Sincerely yours,
Vladislav Chernyshov
Co-Founder, Genome
Posted by: Vladislav Chernyshov | July 9, 2008 12:13 AM
Sarah said...
According to the young developer Vladislav Chernyshov they are: privacy issues, distraction and time-wasting, quantity over quality, ads, and lack of control over your identity.
I don't get it. Social Networking is time-wasting and I don't see how young developer Vladislav Chernyshov is going to make it revert this fundamental fact?
Vladislav Chernyshov, I would be interested to see how you're going to achieve that , ie, avoid time-wasting in social networking site. Can you elaborate a bit more? Perhaps you deserve a Nobe Prize if you could demonstrate via a reasoned argument of how you're going to eliminate time-wasting in social networkings.
Posted by: Falafulu Fisi | July 9, 2008 2:27 AM
Weird, weird blog post for RWW. Where'd the usual acerbic comment go?
Posted by: Jack Thorogood
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July 9, 2008 4:37 AM
I'm not quite sure I understand what makes Genome so unique. I dont see any innovation or any actual product here. Just another upstart social network in a clearly over saturated market. Why the hype? Tell me what I'm missing.
Thanks,
Matt
Posted by: Matt | July 9, 2008 2:28 PM
Wow, my head is reeling from all the vapor! Let's revisit this one after private beta in October. :)
While I *love* the rhetoric, this sound like boiling the ocean.
Posted by: John McCrea | July 11, 2008 9:13 AM
It is very exciting to see how new startups continue to push the envelope in openness and interoperability; the trend that is Modular Innovation. I am definitiely reocmmending this to people as some excellent weekend reading...
http://tpgblog.com/2008/07/11/the-product-guys-weekend-reading-july-11-2008/
Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy
http://tpgblog.com
Posted by: Jeremy Horn | July 11, 2008 12:04 PM
Social networking tools are increasingly conscious of privacy concerns. For example, BumpIn connects users with similar browsing patterns without actually maintaining a central record of this data.
Posted by: gameboy | July 20, 2008 7:05 AM
Very interesting, but a little too complicated to understand all at once. It call comes down the the search functionality. If they can successfully search across many networks, I will bet on it.
Posted by: Give me People Search | July 24, 2008 8:43 PM