5 Early Flaws With Google Buzz
Unless you have been in hiding for the last couple of days you will have heard that Google just launched an exciting new product called Google buzz. I wrote yesterday before the event about how Google had struggled in the past with social and I’m not really surprised with the direction they have taken on this one. They are known for innovating but as far as I can see they have just taken the best parts of Twitter, Foursquare, Friendfeed and added a little dash of Facebook and added it to your email. I can see this product taking off over time for a couple of reasons…a)they have 170 million users who don’t even need to sign up, they will just automatically have the service b)it will only get better on mobile and as that is the biggest area of growth around the social web and advertising Buzz is well positioned. All of this is of course aimed at capturing the hyper local advertising dollars which Google sees as a more and more important revenue channel in the mobile social media era. All the signs are good so far and it will certainly be a bigger play than Google Wave has been up until now but there are still many flaws and areas that will hold buzz back over the next year, here they are…
Problem For Employers
We all use social tools like Facebook and Twitter here in the office because it is part of our job and they are the tools of the trade. I often wonder when I sit watching people on Twitter update on a constant basis throughout the day how any work is actually getting done. I’d always advise employers to allow some access to social media but you do wonder what this will do to the millions of businesses that use Gmail or Google apps. There will certainly be some productivity gains through collaborating through Google Buzz but they will surely be outweighed by the amount of links to funny videos and photos from the weekend that people will be sharing with each other from within their email accounts. Google buzz is both a great tool and a huge potential headache for employers at the same time.
Needs Facebook
There are no 2 ways about it…Google are worried by Facebook. You only have to look at the graph below to see the growth of Facebook (That sees no sign of slowing down) and even though Facebook and Google do not compete directly at the moment they will in the future. Facebook is already starting to sell a lot of ads and those numbers will rise as Facebook finds better advertising solutions for the millions of people who want to target their users. I would say one of the main reasons Google has launched this product is as a direct reply to the threat of Facebook and the fact that Buzz features no integration with Facebook is both a major sign that Google is worried and a serious flaw in the product. Put simply Facebook has become so wide spread and all consuming that social products simple need to integrate with it no matter what. Google buzz without Facebook just feels empty. Just one tiny example is the fact that I share all my photos on Facebook and Facebook alone, I am not about to start sharing them elsewhere so that means Buzz is missing a big trick in that area alone.
No 2 Way Connection
You don’t have to be a genius to see that the ability to update Twitter and other services from within Google Buzz will probably arrive pretty soon but I am pretty dumbfounded that you can’t push your data back the other way and update without having to leave Gmail. Did they not think it was worth waiting to have that in place first? If it is going to be the all conquering communication tool that it is claimed to be then it needs to allow me to update my status on other networks from within Gmail and without that I am still going to be powering up Tweetdeck and other similar services.
Too Much Noise
As I said in my post yesterday I think Google may have misjudged the mood as most people I know are trying to cut down on the amount of noise that they are getting from social media. It is getting harder and harder to find all the good content and relevancy these days as we are swamped with tweets and status updates. Buzz does promise us to help bring everything in to one central place but to be honest it will just be another service that I need to open up and see what is going on. I am not going to stop using Twitter or Facebook just because of Buzz so I now have even more noise to contend with. The whole social media industry has a problem with noise at the moment and it is something that we need to get sorted ASAP rather than adding even more noisy tools to the mix, especially one that lives within our already noisy email.
Wrong Sort Of Contacts
I don’t really want to be in contact with my GMail contacts. They are mostly work related and although I might share work related content through Buzz the content that I want to share (football talk, songs, funny videos etc) will not be something that I want to be sharing with clients. My email is where I work and the contacts in there reflect that, I really don’t want to know where the people I work with all the time are having coffee at the weekend or what TV show they are watching, that info is of no use to me.
Bonus Flaw – No Google App Integration
This is not a fully fledged flaw as they have said that it is coming pretty soon and when it does that is when I think we will see the real value but the fact that I can’t use it for any of my work email addresses is a serious flaw especially given that I pay Google for some of the domains I run and they are giving it away to Gmail users for free first.
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