Google just sealed an acquisition deal with Katango, a company that builds algorithms for automatically sorting friends. The Kleiner Perkins-backed company was founded in 2010. The Katango team will be incorporated into the Google+ team.
Katango’s previous product was an iPhone app that sorted Facebook friends into lists automatically. Google could use the same algorithms to make the work of maintaining Google+ circles easier.
The Katango iPhone app that launched in July automatically generated Facebook friend lists by analyzing users’ social graphs. In September, Facebook launched Smart Lists, solving that problem for itself. Meanwhile, maintaining Google+ circles remains a laborious process.
Ever since we broke the news about Google’s circles, it seemed like a necessary new social networking feature. The ability to selectively share with the right groups of people is an important part of being oneself on the Web. But the effort required to maintain G+ circles is discouraging. Facebook’s smart lists solve the problem remarkably well. Hopefully, the Katango team will help Google help us keep our online social lives organized.
Do you spend a lot of time organizing your friend lists on social networks?
