The world may not need a Google-branded social network along the lines of what Google is reportedly building. My fellow columnist Cathy Taylor made that perfectly clear last week. Yet I can offer a barometer to show whether Google will launch a great product: the more boring Google makes it, the better it will be.

Google excels at boring. Look at the heart of its business model, search advertising. I’ve worked for companies with strengths in search engine marketing since 2004 and penned over 200 Search Insider columns for MediaPost, and I love search as few on this planet do. Still, Google’s take on search, with its character counts and algorithms, doesn’t provide great material for a Cannes award submission or a David Fincher movie.

Google has a similar track record with social media. Its most exciting contribution is a site that has contributed to the democratization of video production and distribution: YouTube. Most of what’s great about YouTube already existed before Google acquired it, while Google has done well with the “boring” aspects of making it scale and developing revenue streams.

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Happy July! This week’s roundup runs the digital gamut — from the engines (is Google working on its own social network?) to Facebook (guess which beloved cookie brand is launching a global Facebook page?) and everywhere in between. Find full recaps of these and other stories in the post below. And of course, you can follow 360i on Twitter for insights from our team all week long.

‘Google Me’ Rumors Swirl as Details of Facebook Competitor Take Shape

A tweet from Digg’s Kevin Rose (since deleted), a confirmation from a former Facebook exec and a story on TechCrunch were all it took for rumors to fly that Google is working on its own social platform to go head-to-head with Facebook. This week several outlets began speculating about Google Me, which according to former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo (he’s now heads up Q&A service Quora) is a very real project to build a “first-class social network” modeled off of Facebook.

Though none of this has been confirmed by Google, the company did begin integrating Google Buzz updates within Google Social Search this week (via Search Engine Land). Social Search, launched in January, displays search results based on individuals you’re connected to per Google.  As Danny Sullivan notes, if all this represents a larger overhaul of Google Profiles and/or Google Buzz, we can expect that Google Me (if and when it exists) will also be integrated into Social Search.

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This week, Internet traffic soared to new heights following the United States’ dramatic win at the World Cup, LinkedIn added new features to up engagement, Google garnered buzz thanks to speculation that it’s working on a proprietary music service and Bing rolled out a new Entertainment page in addition to some key updates to its iPhone app.  Read our full summary below and be sure to check out this week’s POV on SMS Marketing if you haven’t already. It’s the third installment in our summer-long mobile series — and its completely free to read and download.

Report: U.S.-Algeria Game Might Have Set a New Internet Traffic Record

Mashable reports that Wednesday’s stunning World Cup game between the U.S. and Algeria – in which the Americans won in dramatic fashion, advancing to the second round by a heroic goal in the 91^st minute – just might have set a new record for Internet traffic.

Mashable came to this conclusion by monitoring Akamai’s Net Usage Index, which tracks visitors per minute on 100+ news sites in the Akamai network. Following Landon Donovan’s epic goal in the game’s final moments, Mashable says that traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute – a figure greater than the previous high which occurred after the 2008 presidential election.

These figures aren’t yet set in stone, but by early estimation it looks like matchup will go down in history as one of the most exciting sporting events – as well as one of the most highly-trafficked time periods – of recent times.

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It’s been a year since Microsoft unveiled its new “Decision Engine,” Bing, amid a flurry of hype and speculation. Microsoft said the new engine was developed to help searchers navigate more easily through information online – an objective perhaps most vividly captured in the company’s slew of commercials poking fun at “search overload.”

Bing, which was fully rolled out on June 3, 2009, claimed to take a new approach to search through three simple goals (as articulated in the official release): deliver great results, deliver a more organized experience and facilitate fast, more confident decisions through search. Beyond that, Microsoft’s new engine sported a sleek design, with large, vibrant visuals extending across the homepage. Both inside and out, Bing was striving to be different.

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It’s Thursday and we’re bringing you the digital week in review. Catch up on the biggest headlines in our recap below, and follow us on Twitter for insights all week long.

Jobs: Apple Has Inked More than $60MM in iAd Commitments for 2010

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers conference earlier this week, Steve Jobs announced that the company has signed mobile ad campaigns for several large brands, including AT&T, Best Buy and Chanel, among others. TechCrunch also reports that in just eight weeks, Apple has garnered more than $60 million in iAd commitments for 2010 – or half of all mobile advertising spend forecasted for the second half of the year (according to Apple).

Image via The First Post

The iAd platform will allow users to interact with ads from within an app – without disrupting their primary mode of engagement, whether that be playing a game or watching a video. The platform debuts in less than a month, on July 1.

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This week brought big news from Google that might just change how consumers think about television — as well as new stats on Foursquare’s growing user base, the launch of a different kind of location-based network that turns check-ins into a game and a new iTunes feature that incorporates reviews via Rotten Tomatoes. Get the scoop on all of these stories in our recap below.

Google Introduces Web-TV Mash-up ‘Google TV’

Google unveiled Google TV yesterday at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. The new innovation, which Google describes as “TV meets web, web meets TV,” aims to create a seamless experience between media consumption across television and the Internet.

As Google notes, the average American spends five hours per day watching television – however, we are spending more and more time consuming media via phones and computers. If there’s one thing that traditional TV (generally) lacks, it’s the Internet. And if there’s one thing that the web lacks, it’s the viewing experience that TV has to offer.

Here’s how Google hopes to combine the best of both worlds within a “seamless experience:”

• Google TV will have Chrome built in, so viewers can access favorite sites and easily move between TV and the web.
• The product will expand the traditional functionality of television – opening up the experience to include a web browser through which users can play games, listen to music, view photos and more.
• And, of course, Google TV will integrate search – allowing viewers to navigate through various channels, sites, apps and more.

As we noted in an earlier post, television and the web seem to be on a collision course of sorts. People are discussing television in online arenas – and looking to online arenas to find TV content. We look forward to seeing how Google TV leverages technology to further this trend in the future.

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If you’ve conducted a simple search within Google lately – which, let’s face it, you probably have – you may have noticed a new and different variety of result type.  This type of result, one that has been labeled as “One Box”, “Snippets” or “Short Answers,” is becoming more persistent within the engine.  And no matter what Google decides to officially name these types of quick results, you can expect to see more of them in the future.

Whether you want to calculate a simple math equation or solve measurement conversions, Google is streamlining your answers. For example, if you have air travel plans, you can search Google for your airline flight status.  If you are interested in music, you can query your favorite music artists or songs. You can also search for new movie showings or times, and dates of birth or death.  Given the volume of these one-off searches, Google is aiming to increase user satisfaction by speeding up its delivery of the basic information we seek.

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