This is a guest post by Moksh Juneja, Social Media Catalyst and Founder of Avignyata. Follow him on twitter @mokshjuneja
The choice of integration of Google Buzz with Gmail was a good choice rather than creating a whole new application cause as per ComScore pegged Gmail at 176.5 million unique visitors in December 2009. Google Buzz has been the talk of town, Google learnt with Google Wave that creating something abstract and building and hyping it up and if the product does not live up to its expectations. But then they took the same learning, integrated Wave to Gmail, put status updates from Gtalk and Twitter, Gmail users can share Videos from Youtube and Photos form Flickr.
Google Buzz has been buzzing all across Buzz 9 million posts and comments, since last Tuesday. At the same time, tweets on “Google Buzz” within every 11 seconds, technology forums were all discussing with more than 1000 posts per day, since Tuesday (check here & here).
Post Facebook acquiring Friendfeed, Facebook got an easy integration to most of the social media platforms. So, the dominance that Google had over the internet was fading away. Plus, a recent report, stated that people would start using social networks as the primary source of communication on the internet than email by 2015. Internet users would evolve in their communication over the social networks. Google may not be seeking dominance, with Google Buzz will surely be getting enough prominence on the internet.
Google Buzz will surely be reduce on the time people spend on bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon. For a Social Media Marketing perspective, the resulting list of popular media that marketers would use for 2010: Email comes first, with 56.8% realistically planning to use it and second would be Social networks with 56.3%. Google Buzz has created a whole new platform for promoting brands to create visibility through Google Profiles, it would be bliss for the new age of spammers, cause spam would not be in the guise of emails anymore, but in the shape and size of Buzz.
Looking forward to the recommended buzz would it be actually helpful or would it be annoying, will it be able to compete with the Amazon recommendations, this is something still be seen.
Few questions to be asked on Google Buzz which are still unanswered:
- Why not include Orkut, it is still one of the largest social networking sites in India and Brazil?
- Why not have a drop down menu of people who already have a profile on Google
- Why not have an already application on Blackberry, but expected?
In a nutshell:
Exciting stuff on Google Buzz:
- GeoTagging feature built in Buzz for mobile users, competition to Foursquare
- Buzz has a better compatibility on the iPhone
- Seems easier to update and tag people, specially for Twitter users
- Brings Friendfeed features of aggregating, which is good
- It is a Google product, it comes with a lot of excitement
- The real time updates on the Buzz, very similar to Twitter Search
Not so exciting stuff on Google Buzz:
- Still not ready for BlackBerry but expected
- But for people who have a hard time understanding email, this is going to make them more averse technology
- Aggregation is limited to Google Products, plus Twitter and Flickr. Know for a fact if it takes off, then it would include the others RSS feeds!
- So many times Buzz-ing in the mail will actually make the person shift out of communicating with so many people and getting their updates. This will lead into blocking of Buzz in offices, like Gtalk in offices
- With so many updates, it would be like “i missed so much” or “need to switch off, before i start any work”
