With the launch of its Buzz social networking initiative Tuesday, Google underlined its lofty ambitions for mobile expansion. The new social platform is deeply integrated on the mobile side, across Google's mobile home page, Gmail, Google Maps, and Place Pages as well as Buzz apps for Android phones and the iPhone.
With Buzz, Google is specifically stepping more squarely into the burgeoning social location space, essentially giving users the ability to check in via mobile device from local venues as they can on services like Fousquare, Loopt and Yelp.
During Tuesday's event announcing Buzz, Google executives kept shrugging at suggestions that they were competing directly with Facebook and Twitter, and presented their new product as an evolution for Google and an attempt to manage personal social data streams. Sure, that's spin to some extent, but it's also surely Google's attitude toward development of the product. It seems likely that down the road, Buzz -- if it takes off -- will interact with and augment those other so-oft-mentioned social platforms.
Google Buzz doesn't take aim at killing Facebook. Now, would Google mind if its product rendered Facebook and Twitter irrelevant? Of course not. But it's not counting on that. And unlike Twitter, Google makes its money by selling ads. Its base for these ads in Gmail had been on a steady upward trajectory for years. It's likely that this was flattening out, as the company ran out of new people to sign up.
Blogger Tim O’Reilly writes:
There are many of us for whom email is still our core information console, and our most powerful and reliable vehicle for sharing ideas, links, pictures, and conversations with the people who constitute our real social network. But up till now, we could only share with explicitly specified individuals or groups. Now, we can post messages to be read by anyone. Sergey Brin said that Buzz gives the ability "to post a message without a 'to' line." That's exactly right - something that in retrospect is so brilliantly obvious that it will soon no doubt be emulated by every other cloud-based email system.
Buzz items can be shared directly in Gmail, but are also pulled in from other social sharing sites, including Twitter, Picasa, YouTube, and Flickr.
What's particularly cool is that the people you "follow" are auto-generated for you out of your email-based social network. If you communicate with them, they are the seed for your buzz cloud. Over time, as you like or dislike buzz entries from that network, the buzz cloud adapts.
A day after Google debuted Buzz -- integrating a slew of social and local features into Gmail -- early reviews and analysis continue to roll in.
On the news, The Times concludes that Google and Facebook are on nothing less than a "collision course in the increasingly competitive market for social networking services."
Rather than a "me too" social media product, O'Reilly believes that Google "has taken the social media lessons of Twitter and applied them to their own core products."
"At the high level, this is a strong move for Google," writes blogger Jeremiah Owyang. "They continue to aggregate other people's social content, and become the intermediary ... This helps them to suck in Twitter, Flickr, and any-other-data type as the APIs open up, giving them more to 'organize'."
Meanwhile, "Yahoo has got to be fuming, if it has any more fumes left, that is," snipes Federated Media's John Battelle.
In his opinion, initial industry response was "somewhat positive -- mainly due to the huge installed base that Gmail brings to the party." Yet, he questions Buzz's long-term viability because, for one, it doesn't "publish out" to Twitter or Facebook -- which therefore requires users to build a distribution network from scratch.
"Integration with existing social networks are critical for Buzz's success -- especially Facebook," seconds Mashable. "I don't believe Buzz can enjoy significant success without Facebook integration."
According to ReadWriteWeb: "Google Buzz seems to involve an asymmetric follower/friend model, but we're not completely sure how friendships and shared posts will work." Needless to say, the fact that the experts at ReadWriteWeb are confused by Buzz doesn't bode well for its broader adoption.
You can read more about the functionality behind Buzz at O'Reilly Answers: "Google Buzz: 5 Things You Need to Know."
There's a real lesson here for anyone who wants to enter a crowded market: play to your strengths. Think through what job that hot new startup does for its users. Don't copy what they look like. Apply what they've taught you to your own business.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Google Buzz: What's All The Fuzz?
With the launch of its Buzz social networking initiative Tuesday, Google underlined its lofty ambitions for mobile expansion. The new social platform is deeply integrated on the mobile side, across Google's mobile home page, Gmail, Google Maps, and Place Pages as well as Buzz apps for Android phones and the iPhone.
With Buzz, Google is specifically stepping more squarely into the burgeoning social location space, essentially giving users the ability to check in via mobile device from local venues as they can on services like Fousquare, Loopt and Yelp.
During Tuesday's event announcing Buzz, Google executives kept shrugging at suggestions that they were competing directly with Facebook and Twitter, and presented their new product as an evolution for Google and an attempt to manage personal social data streams. Sure, that's spin to some extent, but it's also surely Google's attitude toward development of the product. It seems likely that down the road, Buzz -- if it takes off -- will interact with and augment those other so-oft-mentioned social platforms.
Google Buzz doesn't take aim at killing Facebook. Now, would Google mind if its product rendered Facebook and Twitter irrelevant? Of course not. But it's not counting on that. And unlike Twitter, Google makes its money by selling ads. Its base for these ads in Gmail had been on a steady upward trajectory for years. It's likely that this was flattening out, as the company ran out of new people to sign up.
Blogger Tim O’Reilly writes:
There are many of us for whom email is still our core information console, and our most powerful and reliable vehicle for sharing ideas, links, pictures, and conversations with the people who constitute our real social network. But up till now, we could only share with explicitly specified individuals or groups. Now, we can post messages to be read by anyone. Sergey Brin said that Buzz gives the ability "to post a message without a 'to' line." That's exactly right - something that in retrospect is so brilliantly obvious that it will soon no doubt be emulated by every other cloud-based email system.
Buzz items can be shared directly in Gmail, but are also pulled in from other social sharing sites, including Twitter, Picasa, YouTube, and Flickr.
What's particularly cool is that the people you "follow" are auto-generated for you out of your email-based social network. If you communicate with them, they are the seed for your buzz cloud. Over time, as you like or dislike buzz entries from that network, the buzz cloud adapts.
A day after Google debuted Buzz -- integrating a slew of social and local features into Gmail -- early reviews and analysis continue to roll in.
On the news, The Times concludes that Google and Facebook are on nothing less than a "collision course in the increasingly competitive market for social networking services."
Rather than a "me too" social media product, O'Reilly believes that Google "has taken the social media lessons of Twitter and applied them to their own core products."
"At the high level, this is a strong move for Google," writes blogger Jeremiah Owyang. "They continue to aggregate other people's social content, and become the intermediary ... This helps them to suck in Twitter, Flickr, and any-other-data type as the APIs open up, giving them more to 'organize'."
Meanwhile, "Yahoo has got to be fuming, if it has any more fumes left, that is," snipes Federated Media's John Battelle.
In his opinion, initial industry response was "somewhat positive -- mainly due to the huge installed base that Gmail brings to the party." Yet, he questions Buzz's long-term viability because, for one, it doesn't "publish out" to Twitter or Facebook -- which therefore requires users to build a distribution network from scratch.
"Integration with existing social networks are critical for Buzz's success -- especially Facebook," seconds Mashable. "I don't believe Buzz can enjoy significant success without Facebook integration."
According to ReadWriteWeb: "Google Buzz seems to involve an asymmetric follower/friend model, but we're not completely sure how friendships and shared posts will work." Needless to say, the fact that the experts at ReadWriteWeb are confused by Buzz doesn't bode well for its broader adoption.
You can read more about the functionality behind Buzz at O'Reilly Answers: "Google Buzz: 5 Things You Need to Know."
There's a real lesson here for anyone who wants to enter a crowded market: play to your strengths. Think through what job that hot new startup does for its users. Don't copy what they look like. Apply what they've taught you to your own business.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment