In another step toward becoming socially acceptable, Google today unveiled "Google Buzz" -- a method for social sharing from inside Gmail. Naturally, some ever-creative types are already dubbing this release as a "Twitter-killer" and a "Facebook-killer." Because, we just can't get enough of that kind of language.
(By the way, what Web service would you kill if you could? Take our poll!)
In any case, we won't do that here... not because we think Twitter and Facebook are great or anything. It's just that we've been down this road with Google before. Remember when it was going to kill Wikipedia? Second Life? Skype? Ah, those were delusional days.
Still, the comparisons to Facebook and Twitter are not surprising. Essentially, Buzz is a combination of those services. As in Twitter, Buzz sets you up to "auto-follow" the updates of people you email and chat with the most in Gmail. As on Facebook, Gmail users can post status updates to a small group of friends or publicly to the Internet. Users can also choose to "like" or "unlike" posts from others. Buzz allows users to connect with Picasa, Google Reader, Flickr, and Twitter. But, unsurprisingly, users cannot post out to Twitter -- they can only pull updates in.
See more info on Buzz in this musical video from Google below:
We've known for a while that Google was planning to roll out social features for Gmail. Back in the Late Great June of 2008, Rishi Chandra, product manager of Google Enterprise, told Internet Evolution that Google planned to make its apps more social:
One of the great things social networking has done is create a passive way to consume content. You don't have to be there all the time, but you get a feed of updates, like an activity stream of some sort. Maybe you can apply that to your email box -- so that a portion of them are just passive updates and the rest are emails you need to read.
Allow me to dismiss this all with a great big Yawwwwwn. Here are three reasons I'm not excited:
1) Google is not great at social stuff. So there seems little reason to expect that Gmail is going to become the go-to location for updates from friends. In fact, whenever Google makes an attempt to mimic the successes of other startups, it usually fails (see paragraph three).
Moreover, despite Google's claim that "Our belief is that organizing the social information on the Web -- finding relevance in the noise -- has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google's experience in organizing information can help solve," the company has actually proven through its recent foray into real-time search to be quite bad at producing more relevant content for users.
2) More clutter for Gmail probably means more of those frequent outages and "this feature isn't working right now" messages we Gmail users have become accustomed to. And, rest assured, there will be clutter: All responses to users' Buzz posts are sent to users' inboxes. Also, Buzz promises to recommend content to you from people you aren't even following. Uh... thanks?
3) Google is not actually killing anything, which means all we're getting is yet another hub for useless chatter, yet another place to manage content. Perhaps a centralized destination for email and social networking updates would be a nice thing to have. But considering Gmail has 176 million unique visitors, compared with Facebook's 400 million (according to comScore) -- and considering reasons one and two -- it seems less likely that this is where we're headed, and more likely that Buzz will just become another useless clone of every other social service out there.
seem to me to be other companies, although Yahoo does have an agreement with Microsoft. Take that Wang and hooray for Bartz. Nothing like giving your shareholders a snub and a loss of 34 million.
I use Bing since I live in the true middle of nowhere and it gives me suggestions as to where the closest places are or whatever I happen to want. Microsoft also keeps information on a persons search history for a specified, finite period of time. Ask doesn't even do that. Google is pretty close-mouthed about how long it keeps any information.
I admit that Google does innovation, but so does Microsoft (languages), as did Sun, although now that Larry Elison has his way I'm not betting on any more of that.
If you happen to be Linux fan, Novell has an agreement with Microsoft. If a Mac fan, Unix and Free BSD are pretty easily broken into, witness all the updates. And though Apple sends a 'single' update, it seems to me one of those had 56 fixes. Not to mention problems with other software that company has like Quicktime.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the failure that is orkut.
The other three are not good at search, IMHO. But then again maybe I'm just an anti-Microsoft fanboy.
"Thanks for letting us know that at least there is one company that has find Google buzz really beneficial. It is so easy to prematurely criticize innovations whilst failing to look at the bigger picture."
- You are very welcome, Paul! I figure instead of waiting around to see other companies do it, that I'd take the plunge and try it out. I already utilize Gmail for managing my company's porting processes (it's easier for correspondence I find than using Thunderbird due to the way it organizes the e-mails), so I figured enabling Buzz would be simple, and it has been.
Not everyone is on Buzz, and not everyone is on Twitter. So now customers can get Twitter updates on Buzz too. Seems like a win-win in my opinion and not much more work than one would expect.
I'm sure some people will find it quite interesting, same with businesses. Google's name on it will create buzz with it in and of itself. The key thing is whether it will continue to be tweaked and updated --- giving it staying power.
now my 29-year old Significant Other's son will know exactly why I say I'll kill him (somewhat jokingly) if he ever uses anything Google on any of my computers. I'll just stick to Bing, Yahoo and sometimes Ask for anything search and keep my MSN and Hotmail accounts.
Google is fast becoming a shell of itself. It may be good at search, but so are the other three, as are other services. No Google anything for me.
Thanks for letting us know that at least there is one company that has find Google buzz really beneficial. It is so easy to prematurely criticize innovations whilst failing to look at the bigger picture.
Here is an article that expressed similar views as yours with regards to Google buzz:
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We're live on IE Radio with Naomi Baron, author of Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, and professor of linguistics and language at American University.
Hey, IE Radio fans! We hope you're ready for another exciting interview. Today we're welcoming Naomi Baron, author of Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, and professor of linguistics and language at American University. Baron is joining us at 2:00 p.m. ET.
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Getting to Work on Smart Work: How IT Is Transforming the Implementation of the 'Internet of Things' Organizations in all industry sectors are becoming more instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent -- and that's changing the way they approach virtually every facet of their operations. It's up to IT to help organizations adopt a "Three I's" approach that leverages the emerging Internet of Things and enables them to work smarter. READ THIS eBOOK
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We do love our social networking, but, according to computer scientist Jaron Lanier, we may be diminishing ourselves when we join the hive. “May be? Ha!” says Mr. Cramer.
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