Don't be concerned because Google is competing. Be concerned because everyone I've talked to agrees that Sparks sucks, and is by far the weakest part of Google+.
I'd be a little bit concerned if I were building a web content recommendation system, and my competitor is the world's largest and best index of web content.
Can you please elaborate on this? How does Sparks suck? It's gonna be great to know some more details so we can avoid bad design decisions and possible product failure.
I haven't used Sparks, but I can say this: my primary use for a social network isn't discovering new content. There are already so many awesome ways of doing that. Google Reader or StumbleUpon or Reddit or Delicious seem like better ways of discovering new and interesting content about a certain topic. But maybe Sparks will succeed because it will be a lot simpler to use than these other options and it will be built into some people's primary social network.
Here's a quote about Sparks from the Wired article on Google+:
The signals that Google looks for in determining Sparks content is freshness, a visual component (videos will rank highly), and the degree to which the content is virally spreading on the net.http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...
It throws up a bunch of content out there when I choose a spark. I don't know how they rank the content or how relevant it is to my spark. For example, I tried "Soccer" and it threw up a bunch of results - one them was a link to http://kelviniransomes.blogspot.com/2011/06/eastern-district....
I'd imagined that when you add a spark, you get a bunch of stuff grouped under various categories and various types of information like News, Companies, Products, Blogs, etc. And in case of Soccer, I'd have wanted to see scores, league standings, etc. Basically be intelligent about the topic.
