Joga is an invite-only online community for exchanging videos, photos, scores, news and other items about football. When switched on in the next few days, it’ll be the first tangible results of Google’s partnership with Nike Inc., the athletic apparel maker.
This is kind of new for Google. The search company may rake in billions of dollars a year placing ads on Web sites, but it rarely has such a direct role in marketing a single product or brand as it’s soon to do.
Joga’s Web site and its features appear to be built upon Google’s social networking application Orkut, according to some bloggers. This nexus suggests Google could use Orkut’s inner workings as a foundation for building similar communities for additional marketing campaigns.