Is Google developing “Facebook killer” Social Networking Site with “Google Me”?

If rumors are to be beleaved, Google is developing a new social networking site called “Google Me” as a competitor to currently number one social networking site, Facebook.

Google has not confirmed these rumors yet. But according to SFweekly, Digg Founder, Kevin Rose tweeted (Now it is deleted) last weekend that a credible source has said him that Google is apparently developing a Facebook competitor. Even some close sources to Google and Facebook has confirmed this. Infact former Facebook CTO, Adam D’Angelo has confirmed on his Q&A site, Quora that Rose was indeed correct about Google Me. Here is what he said.

Here is what I’ve pieced together from some reliable sources:

• This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.
• They realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook.
• Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.
• They had assumed that Facebook’s growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldn’t be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didn’t stop, and now they are really scared.

Google currently owns another social networking site, Orkut, but it is successful only in South America and is pretty dull in other countries. Last year also Google came out with two other social sites with Google Buzz and Google Wave but they were also a flop. Infact Google Buzz was more like Twitter copy. Now we have to see if Google comes out with something new this time or Google Me will be just a Facebook copy.

[Via Inside Facebook]