Google Buzz - Another Twitter?

[Scottish Business Owner]

The web has been filled over the past few days with news of Google launching Google Buzz which is their take on Twitter. I have to say i'm a big fan of gmail and have already been made aware of Buzz in my gmail account.

A couple of questions here for discussion:-

I guess it's another example of Google looking to hoard information on users etc and then looking to monetise that in some way further down the line. What do you think?

People are also already calling it "another twitter". Has anyone been using it yet? any initial opinions? Should Twitter be worried in anyway by this?

I'm really starting to wonder if all this social media stuff is just a bunch of hot air. How can users of all these systems seriously expect to keep up to date with them all and follow all the trends etc?

 

[Gordon N]

I would be interested to see it in action as at first glance it appears to be a half way house between Twitter and Wave - this one might actually be useful for sharing (as the video says) more than just status messages...

...however I will have to wait as they haven't got it working on Google Apps Gmail yet

 

[Former Member 1]

I'm really starting to wonder if all this social media stuff is just a bunch of hot air. How can users of all these systems seriously expect to keep up to date with them all and follow all the trends etc?

They can't. Not really; and like other forms of 'social media' or more precisely 'social platform' many of these things are destined to largely fade into social history leaving only utilitarian traces... Think about the position of Cinema in people's lives pre-1960. Think about the Dance Halls in the 30's, 40's and 50's... Cafe racing... Certain music venues...

Much (not all certainly) social media is a trivial (and more often than not utterly banal) pursuit... It serves little in the way of useful purpose. Rather like stamp collecting or the obssessions many of us had as teenagers with some genre of music or 'social group'...

Don't get me wrong; the trivial, the banal the incosequential are a huge part of being human; being part of society. And they also represent huge industries. But in most ways that matter these trivial pursuits are mere distractions to the everyday and over riding priority of (as that ultimate study in trivial obsession Elivice Presley put it) "Taking Care of Business"...

Witness the fact that several organisations of serious purpose are discouraging and even in some cases banning the use of certain socila media sites in the work context.

See the work of people like Henri Tajfel or Henry Allport (Tajfel's work on Social Identity Theory in particular) to gain some broader, more general insight as to why the social media phenomena is at the stage it's at and thus far takes centre stage in the way people interact in a very new and very immature virtual world.

Reflect too (by way of historical warning) on the Dot Com bubble, and the fact that even very high profile platforms like YouTube are, when you really do the numbers on them, in a helluva state...

So yes of course it's hot air... Expect to see major infrastructure collapses as the failure to monetise in reality, bites back eventually on these speculation-driven enterprises... These platforms can only monetise on high levels of group identity and dependence; the scope for that is limited...

 

[Adventurelife]

I was an open minded sceptic on social media and all the tools old and new that come and go.

I am not a fully fledged convert. Why? Testing:001_smile:

I have watched listened and learned over the last 24 months to the buzz, hype and in 98% of the time utter rubbish that is talked about SM.

Slowly I have started using more testing more and measuring the results. The results are I am getting business and although still a small % of overall business generation it is our fastest growing so I am about to put a rocket under it. I have just spent the last few hours training the team down in Morocco on how important it is for us.

I totally ignore what the tools are and what they do they are just software. I am interested in where people hang out and talk about what we provide and destinations we travel to and when we help them our name gets spread and we are picking up business.

To date we are getting business from Facebook, Twitter ( fastest growing) and a host of small SM sites that are product or destination specific.

There are many challenges the main one is how to filter and deal with the huge amount of information that is being produced but the software guys are already on the case and their are tools that help a lot.

Will google BUZZ work ? I have no idea. They obviously have the resource and the penetration to make it reach a certain level fairy quick.

Also you have to understand the google business model. There engineers come up with products and services and produce them out to the world on a daily basis for FREE the product or service will probably never make them any return on investment if you look at it as a stand alone. However , their overall business model is to capture as much time of webs users using their products as possible because that increases their profitable revenue for PPC.

They may get it wrong some of the time but they do not care it is live testing and we the web users are the testers and we say yes or no to each product the launch but all the time they grow revenue from PPC

So I will do they same with BUZZ as I have with others, listen, learn, test and then if it works run with it.

 

[Scottish Business Owner]

Here's an interesting take on the Google Buzz situation. I read a book from the Hubspot guys recently and the article below makes for interesting reading.

Is Google Buzz?s Real Purpose To Be a Buzz Killer?