Latest Celeb News: Google Buzz is About Protecting GMail's Ad Dollars, Not Social Networking

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Google Buzz is About Protecting GMail's Ad Dollars, Not Social Networking

One of my chief issues with Google Buzz is that there's no "there." Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc all have destination sites or apps that allow the user to mentally switch contexts from one-to-one/one-to-few communication to one-to-many. Mike Elgan touches on this here.

This got me wondering: why didn't Google build a hub for Buzz to begin with? I suspect the reason is simple. With Buzz, Google isn't trying to create a new social network. Rather, it's trying to sure up GMail - a major source of ad revenues - from the forthcoming Facebook onslaught.

Even though Gmail has hundreds of millions of users, they actually have much to fear. The enemy is Facebook. With its integrated chat, Facebook Connect and its forthcoming full-featured mail product, Titan, the social network giant has a good shot at syphoning users from Gmail just as Google did to Yahoo Mail and Hotmail half a decade ago. Ponder that.

In addition, here are some of my other thoughts on Google Buzz...

After playing with it for a few days, there's definitely a lot I like. I still don't see it going mainstream - especially given the privacy kerfuffle. This will only scare mainstream users. However, that said, I bet Buzz will become an important niche player for enthusiasts much like Friendfeed was during its heyday. What's more it will encourage everyone else to up their game.

Yesterday on Buzz I outlined 20 ways it can improve. The product team, notably Bradley Horowitz, chimed in and said they are taking all feedback seriously. This weekend's privacy tweaks back up words with action. What else are we missing?

Finally, tips are rolling in around the web. The Next Web and Google Operating System blogs have great tip round-ups. Most notably Google Operating System details how you can search all public updates, even people you're not following (#8). They also reveal how to save these as persistent searches (#9). As you can see from the screen grab below, this is a really handy way to search social content from within Gmail.