To see how important is Google Buzz for Google, consider that Buzz wasn't launched in Google Labs. It wasn't even launched as a standalone service: Google Buzz was integrated with Gmail, one of the most popular Google products. Google Buzz is also the only Google service that has a special icon and a special search command on Google's mobile site. In less than 7 months since Buzz's launch, the service already has a powerful API, it's integrated with Google Maps, Google Reader, Picasa Web Albums and it's constantly improving.
Google Buzz is actually the service planned in 2007 whose goal was to integrate Google's social applications and become the central place for sharing photos, documents, videos, news with your contacts. Google Buzz already streams some activities from Google Reader, Picasa Web Albums, Blogger, YouTube.
Google Photos blog reports that Google Buzz can now share private Picasa Web Albums:
"It used to be all or nothing when it came to sharing a new Picasa Web Album in Buzz. If you created a public album in Picasa Web Albums, it created a public Google Buzz post. That was great for when you wanted to share your photos broadly. But for those times when you wanted to share with a smaller circle — no Buzz. Now when you create a private album, the select people you choose to share your photo album with will see a notification in Google Buzz as well."
Google Buzz also added two other important features: muting posts by source, so you can hide someone's Twitter posts, Flickr photos or the posts from another source, and editing posts and comments from the mobile interface.
It should be clear that Google Buzz is here to stay, even as a feature of a future service.
Also it seems that filtering by source or categories of buzz has just been added (I just buzzed it :-) http://www.google.com/buzz/cmuller13/3wXjEnnnGBm/Buzz-filters-by-source-have-just-been-added-This ). I don't know if I missed a post on the subject.. (in this case sorry).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think it is _the_ great feature that allows buzz to be the union of all your sources of information but without being too invasive, because your followers can cut sources of no interest or that they already follow (e.g., twitter, reader, etc.)
Cheers,
Christophe.
so plenty of reasons to Google Buzz to stay,but how many Gmail users are actually using buzz.
ReplyDeleteEric Schmidt said 10s of millions, so I expect some 15 million users, not bad for 6/7 month old product
ReplyDeleteAs long as the disable button stays too
ReplyDeleteBuzz has the potential to be extremely effective in the Enterprise area. I would LOVE to have it at my office.
ReplyDeleteWho said Google Buzz is an unsuccessful project? It's blasted out with a lot of hidden features and cool APIs those probably will be used in Google Me (or whatever its name). So long live Google Buzz!
ReplyDeleteI love googles concept of Buzz I just don,t know if it will catch on like Facebook.
ReplyDeleteAll these features are great. But is anybody actually using it??
ReplyDeleteI don't use it. It's pointless. But then again, I don't use Facebook either.
ReplyDeletegoogle buzz will be a good hit in enterprise. Buzz is mainly a defensive product for google, so that consumers of google services like youtube, maps, android, gmail, google apps, reader stay within google ecosystem and dont migrate to facebook, so that facebook doesn't occupy the entire social space. And nobody seems to be keen on competing with facebook except for google. Not a good idea to leave entire social space to facebook. Competition is always good for consumers, it keeps companies humble
ReplyDeleteor may be replaced by the new one: Social-XXL?
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.dumeny.com/post/1115851572/whos-social-xxl
I dont use it either. cuz i can't get to understand this thing called Buzz. much too complicated, not transparent in terms of privacy. who's watching me? who's not? Who's watching who? Who's able to see my profile? I dont get it. Next one.
ReplyDelete"Display my full name so I can be found in search (also required to use Google Buzz and Latitude)" keeps me from using it.
ReplyDeleteI could potentially see a use in the enterprise arena. However, Google isn't Facebook. I think Buzz is pretty lame and just a useless replacement for a Facebook status update. For the record, I think Twitter is pretty stupid too, but at least that has a following.
ReplyDeleteI love Buzz and the people who are on it. So respectful and a much more Adult behavior. No spammers and trolls. Well worth the experience. Lets hope Buzz continues!
ReplyDeletebuzz has been cleverly designed, they should have launched it long ago, instead they waited for facebook to acquire 400 million followers and twitter to amass 100 million before starting this. I find Itunes ping also to be good
ReplyDeleteBuzz is nice part of Gmail.
ReplyDeleteOne of cause is: It is not supported to Rich Text formatting.
buzz will not kill facebook, but buzz will kill digg, stumbleupon and all those ridiculous sites and buzz will weaken twitter. Within two years, I expect buzz to have a following of 150 million.
ReplyDeleteI use buzz a lot and am glad it's here to stay
ReplyDeleteI use buzz every day, and its one of my main feeds of information and a place of thoughtful discussion. Buzz haters out there have probably never used it, so if you havent then you really have no factual basis to make a conclusion.
ReplyDeleteBuzz is fantastic and its a growing service day by day and is here to definitely stay.