Winnipeg Free Press - February 25/10
DESPITE an already crowded marketplace, last week Google unveiled its new social-networking platform, which borrows elements from Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. This isn’t the first time the search giant has become involved with social networking. A few years back Google purchased Orkut, but it never really caught on in North America. Despite this, Orkut has 100 million active users worldwide.
Looking to capitalize on the fact it already has a built-in user base through its Gmail application, Google was hoping its hybrid approach to social networking would pull people away from the Big 3. Looking to avoid the problem many social startups have with attracting users after the site first launches, Gmail users were automatically connected through Buzz to the people they emailed the most frequently. Although this information didn’t automatically get posted to the public, many users felt Google had overstepped its bounds and felt that some of the privacy options were difficult to understand.
This has been a public-relations fiasco for Google. Users complained that potentially harmful information could have been exposed to the public and that Google didn’t make Buzz’s privacy options clear enough. Google has been backtracking and making tweaks to its newest online product. Buzz is currently under investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Although the rollout of Buzz has been anything but smooth, Google’s managed to do some things right. Along with it’s real-time Twitter-like feed, you can easily connect other sites like Flickr, Picasa or Google Reader. Buzz also richly integrates photos, videos and links into your posts.
Buzz’s biggest advantage may be its mobile features. Similar to Foursquare, Buzz’s GPS functionality allows users to geo-tag locations around the city with comments that can then become a crowd-sourced city guide. From finding out what the best dish is at the restaurant around the corner to seeing all the posts about a certain event in real time, location-based info is only going to get more popular as more people get GPS. Buzz also invites dialogue among users, something that doesn’t really happen in Facebook and can only go so far in Twitter, owing to the 140-character restriction. Buzz actually brings the social part back to social networking.
It is too early to tell what type of impact Buzz will have on the social-networking landscape. People tend go where their friends are and for Buzz to be successful it is going to have to pull users away from Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. That’s going to be a tough task and Google might need to reimagine how Buzz can be used if it wants to survive.
One approach might be to turn Buzz into a social-networking aggregator similar to Friendfeed, pulling info from a variety of services into one central location. This would let people keep using their favourite service, but make Buzz the hub for all their social-networking activity. Considering most people resist change and are already dealing with social networking overload, this might be Google’s best option to ensure Buzz is around in a few years.
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