GOOGLE MAY be planning the launch of a social networking site to rival Facebook, and is reportedly in talks with online games developers in the hope of extending its social networking scope.

This follows the company’s failed attempt to launch a new global social networking site last year, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal. Google’s last attempt to create  social networking site, Orkut, proved to be very popular in Brazil but not elsewhere.

Alexa, a company that browses traffic behaviour online, ranked Orkut as 65th in the world in the social network category.

Google is speaking with Playdom Inc, Electronic Arts Inc’s Playfish and Zynga Game Network Inc but it is not confirmed whether Google plans to launch a social networking site that includes a social-games capacity.

Social games, like Farmville, have become extremely popular with internet users – and games developers have to rely quite heavily on Facebook to for access to customers.

Facebook poses a unique problem for Google: many of its members – the figure for which currently stands at 500m – use the site to access  information. However the privacy settings on the site mean that Google cannot access a lot of that communication, which is a threat to its business model.

Details about the possible plans have not yet been released but, according to reports, insiders have said the social games would be part of larger social-networking initiative.

Another rumour is that the company will launch a social gaming site called Google Games.