Everyone is buzzing about how to use Google Buzz and whether it will succeed. Some are still tweeting about privacy concerns. Everyone wants to know whether Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz can coexist. In this post, I take a different approach. I begin with the assumption that Google Buzz will succeed and consider what effects that will have on the world of blogging and on more mainstream digital media. I conclude that Google Buzz will have profound effects that significantly differ from effects of any other social networking site that currently exists.
If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon and played around on Google Buzz, you haven’t missed much. I’ll tell you what’s been going on the past few days. It seems like almost all of the buzz is about Buzz. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, however; Google employees have been working around the clock to respond to user feedback with improvements, according to the Official Gmail blog. Many of the improvements relate to online privacy and the auto-follow feature (which is now an auto-suggest feature).
I believe that Google Buzz is primarily aimed at attracting Twitter content right now, not Facebook content. This is a follow up post to the video I recently posted.
Here I gripe about Google Buzz…
I believe that Google Buzz has a lot of potential and I’m digging it. However, it has some kinks that need to be worked out:
- Notifications should skip the Gmail inbox by default. We can see the notifications in the left-hand pane and don’t need to intermingle buzz with email. Filters can be used to route the buzz to archives and skip the inbox (instructions courtesy of LifeHacker at http://goo.gl/3Iyt) but it would make more sense to have a toggle whether the user wants buzz in the inbox.
- Kudos to Google for making responses to buzzes (which work like comments on a blog) editable. However, it would be really nifty if the buzz responses were (a) nested and (b) could be hidden. Many popular buzzes have so many comments that it’s almost impossible to follow the conversation. The clutter on the page is overwhelming too.
- The “Mute” button doesn’t work. Be warned: If you mute a buzz you commented on, then new replies will all show up in your new buzz count. Because the mute button doesn’t work, long discussions like the ones Mashable started are to be avoided.
- The “Mute” button is dangerously close to the “Unfollow” button.
- Let us harvest our Facebook friends list and add them in buzz. While I appreciate the efforts to avoid mentioning Facebook anywhere and not link to it, the ability to draw in our existing social networks would be helpful. Pulling in Twitter followers simply doesn’t cut it for many of us.
I’m actually kind of digging buzz but the issues I identified above need to be addressed ( at least 1 through 4) or this ship won’t sail.
P.S. Mini-Gripe: Couldn’t Google add some more background/color themes to Gmail? The existing ones get mighty boring.
The Wall Street Journal and Mashable are reporting that Google will soon roll out a “status update” feature to Gmail similar to Facebook and Twitter. This is BIG news and “Make Gmail Social” (which appears in the Mashable headline) is now a trending topic on Twitter.
Get ready to see your Facebook stream flooded with Sid Meier’s Civilization Network, a sequel to his popular Civilization franchise. It will begin beta testing in June. Sid has hinted at what players can expect in the game:
No need to reinvent the wheel, right?
While I have been covering the Google vs. Apple war, I haven’t been discussing the Google vs. Facebook war that is apparently brewing. I recommend reading Robert Scoble’s post today:
[Considering I started a Facebook fan page today for Tech Bottle, I thought it appropriate to write something about Facebook. It's been awhile.]
Don’t let the name mislead you, TweetDeck is a terrific program for Facebook. It is written in Adobe Air so it installs on PC Windows, Macs and even Linux. Here’s how it works and a list of some of the helpful features:
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One of the big stories this week is that Twitter will turn a net profit this year simply due to its content sales to Google and Bing, according to Bloomberg. For a cool $25 million, Google and Bing are indexing every public tweet. Twitter’s operating expenses for 2009 will be approximately $20 million. Accordingly, Twitter will return approximately a $5 profit for 2009, which comes as a surprise to many. Currently, Twitter has no other sources of revenue. 2010 is expected to be turning point for Twitter in terms of cranking up the revenue, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. How can this be accomplished without alienating users?
SocialScope is the combined Facebook and Twitter App for the Blackberry smartphone that is under development. It is currently in invitation-only beta testing. I wrote about it a last month. The @SocialScope Twitter account was silent for about a month but just tweeted this evening that the release version will support FourSquare, the location-based networking/game of sorts.
TweetDeck Beta 0.32.1 was released today. As the second most popular twitter interface (just behind twitter’s own web interface), this is big news! The new release supports Twitter lists, LinkedIN and keyboard shortcuts. Head over to TweetDeck.Com to download (Adobe AIR).
SocialScope for Blackberry is the much anticipated social networking app that combines Twitter and Facebook features. The project has been under wraps in its beta stage and many Blackberry users who have requested access have yet to receive an invite. Apparently those who have access are asked to adhere to a strict confidentiality agreement. Therefore, little is known about this project. It appears, however, from scouring chat boards that some breaching early stage testers were unhappy with SocialScope.
During the beta period of SocialScope, RIM announced its own native Twitter app in the works. It is rumored to use push technology to receive tweets. This could be crushing blow to 3rd party Twitter app developers. Consider the impact of RIM’s own Facebook and MySpace apps. Does anyone regularly use a 3rd party Facebook app or MySpace app? The RIM apps have significant flaws but they still squeezed out 3rd party developers. What’s the future of SocialScope, Ubertwitter, Twitterberry (Sarah Palin’s favorite) and other Blackberry twitter apps?
SocialScope better hit the streets first or else it has very little hope of converting people away from RIM’s own Twitter app.
