Is Google plotting to encroach upon Facebooks comfy territory?
Well, it seems it’s launched a sort of social-networking task force: Open-standards guru Will Norris announced on his blog Tuesday that he’ll be starting a new job at Google on Feb. 1, joining a few other prominent social-networking thinkers who have also recently made the jump to Mountain View. “I’m happy to announce today that I’ve accepted a job at Google, working on the newly formed Social Web team,” Norris wrote on his blog. “I will be joining fellow new hires Joseph Smarr and Chris Messina, as well as a host of other incredibly talented engineers, in contributing to the emerging standards and growing developer community in this space.” Joseph Smarr announced in December that he was leaving his job as chief technology officer at Plaxo to join Google; Messina, a high-profile member of the OpenID Foundation and Open Web Foundation, announced several weeks later that he’d also be joining Google as “Open Web Advocate.” Google’s involvement with social-networking and community sites ha
