When it comes to Google, sure, they have the data to aggregate the important bits of my social graph. Do they have the interface? Not by a longshot.

In Google Reader, one of the least social of all my social media tools, I have a friend named Richard Schwarting, a computer scientist and avid post-sharer. Last night he shared with me the culmination of his frustration with Google and their social initiative in the form of a Get Satisfaction thread:

“Yay for Google Contacts! Now tell us whether to "just wait" on greader issues, or what: getsatisfaction.com/google_contacts doesn't exist, even though google.com/contacts does. I realize the service is in BETA, but google reader users with issues about relationship mgmt vis-a-vis google contacts are left reading tea leaves.”

There were around 11 people who ‘had the same problem,’ including one who said: “The same is here. It's very frustrating. I actually nearly gave up on GReader contacts.”

It’s a small and esoteric group of people, we Google Reader fanatics. I get that. It’s indicative of a much larger problem at Google, though.