Google debuted its new “Buzz” today, positioning it both as a service enhancement for the 150 million users of Gmail, and as a social networking extension to mobile subscribers with a gmail account. Today, the service was made available to a select number of journalist and analyst “influencers” who found that a link to “Buzz” appeared just below the “Inbox” link while using Gmail.



As illustrated in the video above, a single click on the “Buzz” link delivers them to a new page where they can take advantage of Buzz’s social networking features. As with Twitter or Facebook, they can post and share comments, status messages, photos, videos, “and more.” As Twitter and Facebook, themselves, have evolved, this is pretty ho-hum stuff. On the desktop, Google Buzz is little more than what we all expected Google Wave to deliver in terms of “sharing” all manner of posts.

Unfortunately, the video pays short shrift to the mobile potential of Buzz. During the Buzz launch at the Googleplex in Mountain View CA (and thankfully streamed on YouTube), Google executives, including Vic Gundotra, showcased the mobile aspects of Buzz, which is a totally different, and more promising, story. Buzz users can “share” core status information – like location and activities – with all of their identified followers or with selected individuals or groups. In doing so, Google appears to have quietly incorporated the location-awareness of Latitude with the all-knowingness of Google Activity Streams and poured it into a mobile Web service. This is really good stuff.

That said, the buzz around Google buzz is, by no means, all positive. In a nutshell, there is a concern that Google, with its abundance of resources, has presented a paralyzing set of options to potential developers and users. This response to a blog post on O’Reilly Radar says it all. Developers have been whipsawed among options that include Buzz, Wave, Reader, Talk, Gmail, Chrome and Android. Which deserves the most attention. I don’t think Google either knows or cares.

From a Recombinant Communications point of view, Google is no friend to the developer community. They’re asking themselves, “Do I Wave? Do I develop for Android? Is this all about HTML5? or What?” Meanwhile, there is a high probability that mobile users will find that a Google Map littered with icons that link to the most recent “Buzz” about a specific venue, event or activity is extremely compelling and perhaps addictive. When they discover that Google is using its search algorithm to associate those comments and recommendations with other real-time info, they may find the ultimate mobile resource to support social decisionmaking. Given Google’s core business model as an advertiser supported online service, the advertising and promotional opportunities in this context will become self-evident.

Buzz is flawed, and is destined to fall short of its promise as an upgrade or augmentation of GMail. But it is fairly easy to predict that its launch will accelerate development of a new channel for reaching the mobile public with promotional and directive messages.

Categories: Articles

Tags: mobile services, Google, Recombinant Communications