Google’s Closed Community
By Rob Safuto on Mar 18, 2006 in Observations | Tags: Community , Google , Nike , Soccer
Steve Rubel reports that Nike and Google have teamed up to launch an online soccer community called Joga. The site appears to accept Google account info, but upon login you’re very likely to see a “sorry” message. For now the site is invite only. You can request an invite by entering your name and email address on the main page.
I’m not sure how I feel about private social networks on the open internet. I do understand that anything Google does attracts incredible amounts of attention and limiting the user base gives them the ability to publicize while scaling the service on their own timetable. This isn’t a new approach for Google either. It wasn’t too long ago that their Gmail service was invite only as well. And if they’re looking to attract only hard core soccer fans then this is certainly a reasonable approach to take.
[tags]Community, Google, Nike, Soccer[/tags]
