When you can’t beat them, buy them. That seems to be Google’s philosophy in the social media market. Because critics will point out that Google hasn’t had a real success story yet in this genre. Google Buzz. Google Lively. Google Wave. All flops. So, as it’s getting progressively harder to predict and build winners that the market will want, logic will tell you to go ahead and buy out the ones already taking hold. Perhaps that’s why Google has just announced their acquisition of Jambool.
Recently at Windy City Strategies, we mentioned how Facebook Credits could one day, in theory, replace the U.S. dollar. Well, in that wishful thinking metaphor, Jambool’s Social Gold virtual currency could be the Euro.
Jambool’s Social Gold currency is already being used by many developers, including LOLapps and Ohai. And recently, John Zdawnowski, former CFO of Linden Labs, creator of the popular Second Life virtual platform stated, “If I were to build the Second Life economy again, I would do it on the Social Gold platform.”
And now that it has Google‘s backing, this weird idea of virtual currency is really starting to get serious.