Jul

Heard About The Buzz?

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Heard About The Buzz?

Many people have been a “Buzz” recently over Google’s newest attempt at social networking. Envious of the success of other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, Google has so far been unsuccessful at breaking into the social aspect of web communication. According to TechCrunch, Google Buzz is basically, “elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services… together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz.”

Will Buzz be able to become as popular as Twitter and Facebook? Only time will tell, but some early critique of the interface has surfaced on Twitter. Comments such as: “Did they just make Google Buzz Mute more annoying by providing a dialog box?” “I am getting really sick of the nasty porn spam that’s invaded my gmail since I tried out Google Buzz on the day of its release. Coincidence?” Or “Please Google Buzz, help me like you.” Jeff Commaroto of Tipping Point Media summed up Buzz this way, “in short, if you want to add yet another social media account to your life or are a lover of GMail who wants to integration across platforms, go for Buzz. If you are already doing too much and don’t want to waste time on something people may simply stop caring about in a year, wait and see.”

TechCrunch posted some thoughts on why they think Google is promoting Buzz. “Google still wants to buy Twitter, and putting Buzz into Gmail might be enough of a threat to bring Twitter back to the table.” Social media has become a popular way to share content online and Google as the superpower of web searches wants in on that traffic. “While Google doesn’t benefit directly from that traffic (yet), simply knowing what links people are sharing and clicking on is valuable data which can help it improve its search results.”

Although there has been much critiquing of Buzz, some people see it as a positive development. Tanisha Sakhawat of Vertical Leap points out that Buzz does not use no-follow links which is of interest and use to companies. “The nofollowdevelopments attribute backfired for Google as they can’t index most links these days.” Said Tad Chef, a SEO professional. Vertical Leap also praised Buzz for “a third party application called buzzy.com, which is integrated into the [Buzz] homepage, which can be used for keyword research.”