01 210 8127 or 086 868 45 06
+44 (0) 20 8133 8127
5 Early Flaws With Google Buzz
Like it? Tell your friends!
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.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Zesty Show – Kindle, Twitter & Youtube
- How has social media affected search?
- The Zesty Show Episode 5 – QR Codes, Old Spice And Facebook Controversy
- Google TV launching?
- The Zesty Show Episode 4 – Google Me, Browser Wars And Jonah Lomu
The problem with buzz is that it does nothing. Nothing new at all.
What google have done is made gmail more complicated for most users. Remember, as cool and trendy as facebook, twitter & foursquare are, piss all percentage of the overall internet populous use them. They use Google though. And a lot of people use Gmail. Even with the Gmail integration of chat… I’ve yet to actually use it. I used it on launch day and never went back. I have MSN & iChat. They do the job better, are dedicated, and get updated.
Google have far too many fingers in far too many pies… eventually the pie has to crumble. Look at Wave. It came with great promises to do things better, just like Buzz. And integrating social web and community, it would stand apart from other services. But Google launched it (in “beta” mode to avoid critisism for it being utterly broken) and then got side-tracked with Buzz, phones and other things. As such, Wave isn’t being looked after and the people aren’t using it. This is what’ll happen to Buzz.
Google need to go back to basics and re-discover how great they were… and how great they used to be. I’ve a huge opinion on this and have to write a big long, convoluted blog post about it. But this comment is the guts of it
Kevin I am with you on this one. I never want to write anything off or call it shit completely because when you make statements like that they usually come back and bit you in the ass. Really not sure on Buzz, some cool stuff in there especially for mobile and the fact that it has 3 times bigger user base than Twitter upon launch gives it a chance but I personally really don’t want anything in my email other than email.
Have been starting to have the same thoughts as yourself about Google recently. They do an awful lot f stuff really well but it tends to be the more clinical stuff like Maps, documents, search, stocks etc. I just haven’t seen them get anything really right on the social front and it is certainly not from a lack of trying! It feels to me that they are doing something that they never did before and that is getting caught up in the promotion and hype game that so many companies embrace. Its all new phones this, Google Wave that, twitter in search results yada yada. They were never that sort of company up until recently. The one thing I will say about them is that they fully understand mobile and they are running head first in to that market because they know that is where the money is going to be from advertsing over the next 10 years!
The first feature of ‘google buzz’ that had me hyped was how to turn it off(Bottom of the footer). Not really loving the google buzz after having a brief test drive.
Woot! Great tip Joe, thanks.
Really not feeling the online love these days Joe? I think we all go like that every now and then and just need to walk away from it. thinking of writing a post on it actually one of these days…the need to take a break from online every once in a while
I think I dived in too far at the start. Hearing about people I didn’t really know becoming mayor of or going to places I didn’t know or care about on 3 different social networks (foursquare, twitter and facebook) was wrecking my head a bit. To wake up and see people I didn’t really know (or care for) auto following my “buzz” this morning has added to my woes. Having a full time job and trying to have/get a smallish biz site up and running was taking time enough, so for me yeah a break of sorts is/was needed. I’m just tuning things to my liking for now. I’ve dumped LinkedIn, Foursquare and now Buzz. Hopefully I will keep my Twitter with much less noise now, great for tech or local queries (eg: web design & quick weather updates
) and my facebook and be a little more careful about who i add in future.
Having said all that, hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of a fantastic interweb idea. I trust I can count on major support from you if needed?
Wow good to get that explanation Joe. I feel like that all the time myself which is why I never use Foursqaure and only take notions to use Twitter. LIke tonight I am struggling to concentrate on work and have been dabbling in there. Past couple of weeks I have been trying to keep it to a tweet or two a day as it can just become a massive time waster. It can become nearly a bigger part of some people’s lives (me at the start) than living life itself and I cringe when I am at tables with 6 people on phones tweeting to each other. All good things in moderation I guess. Always found it funny like you say that a few hundred people would know more about your daily life than your family and friends would!
Nothing to worry on the internet businesses front, like you say I’m there with ya whatever comes up next! Good to have ya kinda back Joe
The populating my inbox with inane posts, the problematic link with twitter and a host of other things are turning me off Buzz.
[...] have been thinking a lot about Google this week amid the launch of Google Buzz and after talking to a few people on Twitter about it I am in no doubt that they are losing a [...]
[...] and it means that all of us practicers of social media often get swallowed up in the hype that is Google buzz or Chatroulette or new iPhone apps. Every week some new services or feature within a service is [...]
[...] on developing this tool is more use than the 100s of people they would have had working on the useless Google Buzz, at least this has some use. If you want to make your own video you can head over here now and add [...]