What does Google’s buy out of Slide mean?

News of Google’s acquisition of Slide, a social apps and photo software maker, led to a flurry of discussion regarding Google’s plans for becoming a bigger player in the social networking arena.

Google has had some (socially-oriented) flops on their hands lately – Buzz was launched too quickly, and Wave just this week saw its development stopped (and will probably be shuttered).

There has been a rumor for a few weeks well now that Google is planning to build a Facebook-like site to of course, compete with Facebook. After all, 500 million pairs of eyes (and growing) is a lot of traffic and in turn, ad revenue. Slide would fit right into those plans as they already have some of the most popular social networking apps and widgets to go along with such a platform.

And if not, Slide still makes money hand over fist and that can’t be a bad thing to own.