Buzz

AT&T seems to have missed the forest for the trees with a new social media site that shares some shockingly similar traits with Google’s social media baby.

A recent News Blaze article, “AT&T Interactive Opens Buzz.com Beta to the Public” laid out the good intentions behind this new service. Combining the logic of countless local recommendation sites and social media, the Buzz.com allows users to share restaurant and other business suggestions to friends. While this gives insight on everything from veterinarians to Vietnamese food, AT&T is cutting things a little close to the competition. First off, the name is shockingly close to Google’s Buzz. Secondly, it too populates a friend list from Facebook.

The SSN Take: The road to irrelevance is paved with good intentions and if you plan to work in the social media realm, differentiate yourself from the competition.

Patrick Roland, April 27, 2010

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One by one new phone applications are being released for Google Buzz, as they try to hold their own against Facebook.

With many balls in the air – responding to user complaints about Buzz’s privacy issues, while practically still in launch mode and then moving forward with phone applications to attempt to corral their existing customers – Google seems to be scrambling against the powerful and popular Facebook platform. MediaPost.com recently reported in their article, “Google Boosts Mobile Social Networking” that by releasing an application for Orkut – a social media platform popular in Brazil and India – Google is attempting to capture some of the potential new users those areas offer. However a Facebook blog predicts that with their recent growth, Brazil will soon be the home to the most Facebook users in South America. It will be interesting to see how the numbers play out when the dust settles.

The SSN Take: Offering a variety of applications is definitely a good approach for Google and a lesson to learn for all business entrepreneurs. Don’t limit your customers.

Melody K. Smith, March 26, 2010

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Google continues its blitzkrieg on the digital world, claims a thought-provoking Mashable piece “Google Chrome Continues to Grow at Other Browsers’ Expense.”

Much of the talk focusing on Google in 2010 has been on its unveiling of Buzz, the search engine’s tentative first step toward entering the social media world. However, its browser, Chrome, was the only browser to actually gain in popularity during the month of February. While the browser still is used by little more than 5% of those polled, its steady climb is a sign that Internet Explorer and Firefox are nearing their expiration date. This should act as a wakeup call for any business that supports only Internet Explorer. Online video giant YouTube recently announced it would no longer support the longtime popular browser beginning in March. As this sea change becomes more popular, smart businesses should adjust.

The SSN Take: Don’t stick with the MS dinosaurs.

Patrick Roland, March 8, 2010

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Google wants all social media to be equal, claims Tech Radar article “Google Buzz merges private and work lives: this spells trouble,” but your business may not agree.

By now, if you use Gmail, you’ve noticed the new menu icon for Buzz and discovered it helps share and read social media streams with everyone on your email list. The problem, Tech Radar states, is that most people have separate social networking friends from those that they email frequently. Buzz, however, threatens to cross those two streams and this worries some.

Very few people want to read about what type of breakfast cereal a customer is deciding between and most would recoil at the thought of business associates seeing their weekend pub crawl pics. Google’s Buzz presents a difficult crossroads for anyone wanting to keep their professional and personal lives separate—unless, of course, they want to help a client pick out Cheerios.

Patrick Roland, March 5, 2010

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In the article “On Potential Privacy Problems With Gmail Buzz Exposing Email Contacts,” we find that this newly christened social network has some potential flaws. This isn’t news; it’s been all over the Internet. But as Google keeps making fixes, you need to be away that a big problem is privacy regarding how your email contacts are distributed among other people you are associated. The opportunity to change is created when Buzz pulls from your Gmail account and suggests friends for others within your network. The example given was: if your friend is your wife, and it suggests that she become friends with Susie, your high school crush, it may cause problems.

In Buzz’s defense, they have installed features where you can turn these options off, but do they really work, and do you know how to make it happen?  You wouldn’t want your boss getting a friend suggestion from your email list and it be a competitor. Awkward and potentially damaging are the images that come to my mind.

Belinda Sissom, March 4, 2010

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Clicking through the social networking sites online may leave you confused and perplexed on committing to a site or joining them all. To help us eliminate some of those concerns is an article called “Web Strategy matrix” — Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter.  The matrix breaks down the basics for each social site: strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for growth.

Growth may be a passing fad for the original social website MySpace, who had it all and is slowly letting it slip away due to bad management. Twitter has the celebrity support but not much has changed since the first tweet. Facebook has an opportunity for growth by finishing the creative process and implementing their “Project Titan,” an email base for Facebook users, which would allow it to compete directly with Google Buzz.  The new kid on the block, Google Buzz, combines networking, email, and search capabilities but still lacks the appealing design of Facebook and MySpace. So for now, it’s a matter of what you want and where you can get the most of it in one place.

Belinda Sissom, March 3, 2010

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Flexing its internet muscles, Google recently jumped on the social media bandwagon with Buzz — its most ambitious attempt to marry the Gmail Web interface with status updates and media-sharing technology in an attempt to solicit the social media junkies to spend more time on Google’s sites than on competitors like Facebook or Twitter. However, the lack of clarity on the privacy settings and the outrage shown by the users may result in a knockout punch.

Though Google has announced some changes to Google Buzz addressing the privacy concerns with the new service, it already may have been too little too late.  Early users found the privacy settings confusing and very complicated to maneuver – especially the ability to hide one’s followers. This earned them very strident criticism and all out venomous customer feedback, along with a mass “turn off buzz” reaction.

Even for those who are okay with revealing more of their self in the social media world, there was also some assumption on the part of Google, that they may have mistakenly considered insight, where they assumed the most frequent people emailed from user’s Gmail accounts would be the same people with whom those users would want to share Buzz updates. Have they never heard what happens when you assume? One would think with all the focus on the security of information in social media sites such as Facebook in recent weeks, Google would be more ahead of the curve on this one.

Cnet.com referred to this public relations debacle in their aptly titled post “Google Buzz: Privacy nightmare.” Buzz hasn’t impressed users, even without the privacy issues. Inflated notices of new “Buzz” available only to find duplicates and retweets of the same news post and the fact that all the annoying features are set by an “opt-out” status — which means unless you know about them you can’t stop them – makes the user’s first impression of Google’s Buzz, well, kind of a buzz kill.

Some people think the fear regarding privacy on the web is over exaggerated. Technorati recently referred to Google’s approach as “revolutionary” in their post “Google Buzz Privacy Fears Overstated”. The author believes concern over privacy on the Internet is antiquated and users need to get used to the idea that what we do on the Internet is not private. It seems like there should be a happy medium somewhere in this that we can all live with comfortably.

Melody K. Smith, March 2, 2010

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Decisions! Decisions! Decisions! That is what we are left with now that Google Buzz has arrived on the scene. It has added features, increased the level of media capabilities, and raised the bar for updates including increased ease of linking within sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc).  Fast Company breaks the competition down into three areas within the article “Test driving Google Buzz: How does Face book compare”. Those are media, integration and fun, with Facebook taking two out of the three top spots.

The decision comes when you must decide between newbie Buzz and Facebook, where your network is established with friends, family and colleague contacts yet lacks the media upgrades. For the consumer/user, this battle of the social networking clients should only enhance our experience and magnify our ability to connect with one another.

Belinda Sissom, Feb. 28, 2010

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Despite a rocky start with privacy issues, Google’s latest attempt in capturing the social media audience with their launch of Buzz seems to be winning the hearts, or at least the hands of the users. Mashable.com recently reported on this impressive achievement in their article, “Google Buzz Has Completely Changed the Game: Here’s How.” It seems that the ease of set-up – because basically there is none since it is wired directly into Gmail – is the biggest selling feature of the product. With this phenomenal success, the author ponders what Google’s success means to other social sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Though they project the impact will not literally put the others out of play, it certainly will impact the advertisers’ decisions on where the dollars are spent. However, since Buzz is new and changes are being made almost daily, it would be sensible of them to keep a watchful eye on the user response to those changes.

Melody K. Smith, Feb. 23, 2010

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With the release of Buzz flapping everyone’s wings over the last Internet halflife, it’s time to consider some practical application for Buzz. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has laid the groundwork in the article “How to Search Google Buzz.”

For the record, the “type it in the box and trust the search results” isn’t enough with this service from Google. Searching Buzz, a social media tool that gets food from Twitter, Google Reader, Friend Feed, and SMS, retrieves results from a typical box search that are surprisingly old in the real-time scheme of things.

Perhaps it’s the law librarian in me that makes the lack of specific date and time on the search result for Buzz particularly discouraging. The truth is, even Buzz will find its way into the courtroom somehow, someway.

I tried out Mr. Sullivan’s tip on advanced searching for Buzz with “has:link” This search confirmed that the search engine company synonymous with finding information is actually behind Buzz. The author and commenter search seems to work too.

Here are my key take-outs for Buzz searching.

• For accurate “updates” results per Sullivan use Google’s real-time search
• Advanced features for author, commenter, link/image/video work well.
• A fatal flaw is the date/time display. I’d rather have the results offered up with a true date and time than hours, minutes, seconds.
• Relevance vs. chronological sorting is not apparent. Neither seems to be the default. Pick one and make it so.
• “Googling” Buzz at this point in time does not mean users will “find” the answer.

I’m sure some will say that the whole point of Buzzing is the real-time nature of social media. I would answer that with: a) don’t provide search if updates are all that’s important and b) real-time obviously puts a premium on time, so fix the date of origin.

Read a more in-depth analysis at Beyond Search.

Constance Ard, Answer Maven, Feb. 22, 2010

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