Google is getting ready to launch a brand-new social network called "Google Me," according to a rumor circulated Saturday on Twitter by Digg Founder Kevin Rose.

"Ok, umm, huge rumor," Rose wrote in his tweet. "Google to launch facebook competitor very soon 'Google Me', very credible source."

Google did not respond by press time to TechNewsWorld's requests for confirmation and comment.
'Kevin Has Had the Midas Touch'

"Any time Kevin Rose speaks (tweets), I listen," Lon Safko, social media entrepreneur and coauthor of The Social Media Bible, told TechNewsWorld. "Kevin has had the Midas Touch on many projects and is in the know."

Of course, "the mysterious tweet is still unsubstantiated," Safko noted. "So far all of my Google contacts are not picking up their office or mobile phones.

"I suppose this adds additional circumstantial evidence to Google's charges of trying to knock off another killer social app," he added.

200 Million Users?

However, given Google's existing Orkut and Google Buzz social networking services -- and the less-than-stellar success of the latter, in particular -- there's been widespread speculation as to what form a new contender might take.

One possibility, for instance, would be that Google plans to combine the two in its new offering, as The Next Web's Brad McCarty suggests.

"Knowing that a Google account is required to use Orkut, and a Gmail account is required for Buzz, we can safely assume that we're looking at roughly 200 million users to any service that would combine the two," McCarty wrote. "200 million is already half of the 400 million population of Facebook."

More: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Google-Rumored-to-Be-Taking-Another-Swing-at-Social-70303.html