Nerve Endings Firing Away

Google entered the world of status updates and friends-followers when it introduced its GMail-enabled platform, Google Buzz for social networking. If you are a GMail user, the service was turned on for you automatically and the email contacts you were most frequently in touch with are now your ‘followers’ and you in turn are ‘following’ them. Google Buzz is a service where you can share status updates, links, photos on Flickr or Picasa, videos, Twitter updates, and Google Reader Shared Items. People who follow you will see these updates in their Buzz tab and can ‘like’ or comment on them, just like Facebook. But if you are thinking that Friendfeed does all that and more, you are probably right too except Buzz is bolstered by GMail’s 176 unique monthly visitors (as of December 2009). Other social networking sites will kill for those numbers on their launch day; just like Friendfeed which never got beyond those early adopters.

Public Reactions

The popular buzz in the tech world around Google Buzz is of instant dislike and feeling of being overwhelmed by information that they already get via Facebook or Twitter. Also, privacy concerns regarding public knowledge of your followers-following list has made Buzz the target of scorn that Apple’s iPad was only too happy to deflect. And I agree with most of the criticisms although most of the concerns can easily be fixed by tinkering with the privacy settings or even completely turned off. Reacting to user outrage, Google to their credit has fixed some privacy issues and some more^[1]. I still think we have not yet heard from people who will actually end up using Google Buzz.

So will Google Buzz survive this backlash and go the Google Wave way into obscurity? I’m guessing avid users of Twitter and Facebook will initially stay away. This network is clearly targeted at people who have found even Twitter daunting. They rather not go to another site, register, and then hunt for people to follow much less be constantly updated on their followers updates using third-party desktop apps. Google Buzz hands them a ready-to-go social network populated by their friends and invites them to dive in. Such newbies may not have a Twitter account or would have used Google Reader much less shared any items. But they may have a Picasa or Flickr account that they can easily connect to share photos. They may be watching videos on YouTube that they are eager to share. Buzz smartly detects any blogs that are associated with the account beyond the Blogger accounts. And of course, the tempting empty text box at the top with a simple message below that says, Share what you’re thinking. Post a picture, video, or other link here.

Target Audience

Google Buzz is not aimed at you. It, like the iPad, is aimed at your mom and dad who have heard of Twitter but will have nothing to do with it. GMail provides them the warm comfort of familiarity that will slowly introduce them to other social networking sites and nudge them toward adding more connections thereby causing them to browse and share more information on the Internet. Google’s philosophy is simple – get more people to use the Internet and more frequently. This feeds directly into their main business which is search and serving you text link ads. More you use Buzz and the Internet to search and share information, the more you use Google. All the privacy concerns hardly matter to this demographic group probably because they aren’t aware of its implications yet. So while you will successfully switch off Buzz and hide your follower-following list, 80% of Buzz users will not even be aware of this problem. Google counts on that ignorance to make Buzz successful.

Personal Observations

Personally speaking, I too am concerned about the noise and privacy in Buzz. I have disabled and switched off Buzz from two of my three GMail accounts; the ones I use for personal and professional contact. But I’ve left the Buzz in my GMail that I use for blogging purposes on for now. I follow people that I know via blogs and Twitter in this account (if you read this blog, I probably am following you or vice versa). Some quick observations:

• People have gone overboard and connected all the sites that Buzz provides them with creating lot of redundancy. I see the same updates in Twitter, Facebook, and Buzz. I wish Google will iron out these problems that not only let us unfollow or block people but also let us selectively exclude some sites from their friends that they wish to follow.
• Currently, I have connected only three sites to my Buzz – Flickr, this blog feed, and Google Reader Shared Items. Considering that I mostly read blogs in NetNewsWire, you will be rarely seeing shared items. Connecting my blog’s feed makes sense because readers can like or write comments to the posts. I think I can live with people not clicking through to my blog to comment :)
• Since I consider Buzz being popular among the non-tech users, I’m tempted to switch on Buzz in my personal GMail and see how my family and non-blog friends are using it. But I already see their online content in Facebook where I use my real name.

So right now, Google Buzz is just a new toy that we all are talking about and playing with. Once something new comes along, we all will move on. But I think most Internet users who rarely venture beyond email will find it liberating and exciting. Those users will stay on. And they have a several million majority over us.

Footnotes:

1. Google has now made following people opt-in, which is what they should have done to begin with [↩]