Google Won't Kill Dodgeball

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that contrary to Valleywag's predictions (here, here, and here), Google is not going to kill Dodgeball.  I don't care if the founders are gone, and I don't care if Twitter looks like the runaway winner in the social SMS messaging space.

Google loves platforms that encourage consumers to give them their content.  Whether it be Search, Blogger, Google Base, Google Calendar, or countless other applications, Google provides the tools, we provide the content, and Google learns from that content and figures out how to slap ads on it.  This is what they do - and do better than anybody else.  Dodgeball provides the SMS piece of this strategy.

Is there any question that Google's ad network couldn't benefit from knowing exactly where Dodgeball users are at any given moment?  Or on a broader level, that Google wouldn't know exactly what to do with all of the activity and preference data that Twitter is already generating?  My guess is that there's a couple of sharp young Google PMs working on making Dodgeball more Twitter-like as we speak.   They'll give it a go as a Twitter knock off for a while and try and do to Twitter what Google Calendar did to 30 Boxes.  If that doesn't work, Google will admit defeat and try and snap up Twitter.

Having a steady, constantly updated stream of activity, thought, and preference data from consumers is an ad network's dream (compare this sort of stream with the stagnant, rarely updated profiles on a Facebook or MySpace).  I find the idea of Google somehow choosing to abandon the SMS platform that could enable this data stream to be preposterous.

(oh yeah, Google will you please make a Dodgeball widget so I don't have to build my own?  Twitter's widget seems to be doing OK)

Comments

[Narendra]

um, google calendar didn't kill 30 Boxes. we continue to crush them across the board ;-)

[lawrence]

Narendra, no disrespect intended to 30Boxes. I do think that the launch of Google calendar took some momentum from you guys. I'm wondering if a retooled Dodgeball could do the same to Twitter.

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