Alberta Business Marketing

It’s too early to tell how successful Google Buzz will be, or even the full extent to how folks will us it. Starting off by opening the floodgates of social networking to over a hundred million Gmail addresses is certainly getting a lot of people to give the new social networking tool a workout, and it just could threaten a number of social media platforms.

Heck, you can’t get away from it,

It’s all colourful and bright, sitting right there under your inbox, how can I resist clicking on it!

Bullying their way vs. Social Media startups

Google and Facebook have the power to start with an audience and grow time on their sites by offering new user experiences. Google has learned from Facebook that a strong userbase is powerful and that by changing the user experience, they can copy what smaller upstarts are doing, threatening them with extinction.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, the folks at Friendfeed would be delighted with Googles effort. But in the art of social media, imitation is a weapon used by Goliath to take out David before he gets his stone spinning.

Buzz adds a few wrinkles on social networking that Twitter and Facebook don’t have:

Private Buzzing your contact groups

Thanks to Chris Messina for pointing this one out. If you create Gmail groups (or use them already) you can target your Buzz to only go to the private recipients. This is far better than the direct messaging of Twitter or the limited options for sharing content in Facebook.

Handheld Buzz includes Nearby Posts and Maps

This could be interesting. Google seemlessly rolled out Buzz across it’s some mobile platforms as well including iPhone. On a handheld, you can see the buzz from your community as well as to see the local public buzz – what is going on around you! This could be a game changer for travel.

Imagine the power of buzz posts to influence your dining decisions when you can see photos and descriptions of what others are doing at nearby restaurants!

It’s not hard to imagine that Google Maps layered with business reviews from Buzz would overwhelm the impact of other review platforms like Yelp! and TripAdvisor.

In it’s own way, buzz may be not as game worthy as foursquare, but Google is certainly offering many of the benefits of social interaction and it is far more likely that your friends have access to Buzz, than any of the upstart social networking games.

Buzz status can even be updated by speaking into your mobile phone!

After one day with buzz, my head is swimming with the possibilities, and the number of followers is growing.

Learn more:

• Five Tips from ReadWriteWeb.
• Jaunted: Will Buzz change the way we travel?

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Tags: buzz, google news
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Yesterday, Google announced a new service, Buzz, a service for users of its Gmail service to share updates, photos and videos. The service will compete with sites like Facebook and Twitter, which capture a significant percentage of the time people spend online.  Buzz is built into Gmail, which already has 176 million users, according to comScore,   Like recent changes to Facebook, Buzz allows users to post status updates that include text; photos from services like Google’s Picasa and Yahoo’s Flickr; videos from YouTube; and messages from Twitter.

The changes to the Gmail interface that include Buzz will be rolled out to users over the coming weeks.

For Google, Buzz is intended to encourage users to spend more time in their Gmail email site. Already, Google Chat, Google Calendar and Google Docs and Google Tasks succeed in making an open email window standard operating procedure for Gmail users, but these tools are generally used as a work platform.   I can access the tools on my computer or phone and  it’s the place I get work done!

Will Users see Buzz in their Email as spam?

By connecting social activities of users and making unsolicited suggestions of content for users, some from unknown sources, (friends of friends) Google risks upsetting users who will see such social interjections as spam.  Especially when they land in users inboxes.  Many folks perceive email to be the place where work gets done.   For its part, Google unhesitatingly says that bringing Buzz personal social networking to the work space is a good thing.

I disagree.

There is certainly a lot of social spam in social networks like Facebook and Twitter and when I log in, (whether for work or play), I know what I can safely ignore and what I need to pay attention to.  I also know how status updates, sharing links fits in the ecosystem of social networks.  For now, I can always step away from these sites and go back to email to focus on getting some work done.

Will Buzz generate more bling for Google?

Google has a problem.  Google is not Facebook.  Facebook with 400 Million users as it celebrated just it’s 6th birthday is still growing.  Social Media platforms are a growing source of revenue as users spend more and more time networking and Google wants a piece of that economic pie.  If all goes according to Google’s plan the new interface may make it easier to generate revenue by keeping Gmail users in their account, where adsense revenue can be generated from those ubiquitous ads that most Gmail users are already blind to.

Fine, so long as the new Buzz doesn’t upset a loyal user base and have us reaching for the Spam button.

What do you think?  Do you want social networking in your email?

Links:

NY Times reports on Google Buzz

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Tags: email, Facebook, google news
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Yesterday, Google announced a new service, Buzz, a service for users of its Gmail service to share updates, photos and videos. The service will compete with sites like Facebook and Twitter, which capture a significant percentage of the time people spend online.  Buzz is built into Gmail, which already has 176 million users, according to comScore,   Like recent changes to Facebook, Buzz allows users to post status updates that include text; photos from services like Google’s Picasa and Yahoo’s Flickr; videos from YouTube; and messages from Twitter.

The changes to the Gmail interface that include Buzz will be rolled out to users over the coming weeks.

For Google, Buzz is intended to encourage users to spend more time in their Gmail email site. Already, Google Chat, Google Calendar and Google Docs and Google Tasks succeed in making an open email window standard operating procedure for Gmail users, but these tools are generally used as a work platform.   I can access the tools on my computer or phone and  it’s the place I get work done!

Will Users see Buzz in their Email as spam?

By connecting social activities of users and making unsolicited suggestions of content for users, some from unknown sources, (friends of friends) Google risks upsetting users who will see such social interjections as spam.  Especially when they land in users inboxes.  Many folks perceive email to be the place where work gets done.   For its part, Google unhesitatingly says that bringing Buzz personal social networking to the work space is a good thing.

I disagree.

There is certainly a lot of social spam in social networks like Facebook and Twitter and when I log in, (whether for work or play), I know what I can safely ignore and what I need to pay attention to.  I also know how status updates, sharing links fits in the ecosystem of social networks.  For now, I can always step away from these sites and go back to email to focus on getting some work done.

Will Buzz generate more bling for Google?

Google has a problem.  Google is not Facebook.  Facebook with 400 Million users as it celebrated just it’s 6th birthday is still growing.  Social Media platforms are a growing source of revenue as users spend more and more time networking and Google wants a piece of that economic pie.  If all goes according to Google’s plan the new interface may make it easier to generate revenue by keeping Gmail users in their account, where adsense revenue can be generated from those ubiquitous ads that most Gmail users are already blind to.

Fine, so long as the new Buzz doesn’t upset a loyal user base and have us reaching for the Spam button.

What do you think?  Do you want social networking in your email?

Links:

NY Times reports on Google Buzz

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Tags: email, Facebook, google news
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Google SideWiki is a plugin for Google Chrome that allows people to add comments to existing Web pages.  The comments are viewable by others using Google SideWiki in a Chrome browser.  Oh, and you need to have a Google account too!

At present, less than 10,000 users have SideWiki installed, so its usefulness is extremely limited.  But it might be useful to tourism businesses now or in the future.

Current uses could include gathering usability suggestions for shared Web sites or helping clients or staff find and correct errors or omissions.

In the future, such tools could enable commenting and reviewing to be widespread.  Visitors to your Web site could get advice and information from other visitors.  Perhaps in some way, this technology would be like digital graffiti with no real value, but projects like Wikipedia have shown how a community of users can contribute to the knowedge and information in a very positive way. . . of course there are editors ensuring the content added to Wikipedia is accurate.

Interesting.

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Tags: google news, wiki sidewiki wikipedia
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Google Real Time Search:

Today we see what Google has been working on with Real Time Search.  Integrating search results from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other news feeds, Google search results show a small scrolling bar of results.  The importance that Google attributes to the real time results determines how high the scrolling real time results display.

Try it yourself at http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&esrch=RTSearch

Links:

• Marissa Mayer introduces Facebook and MySpace to the real space inventory of searchable data.
• Google also introduced Google Goggles for Android phones. In it’s infancy, Goggles will make your head spin with the possibilities for the future of Visual Search.

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Tags: google, google news, real time search
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