It’s been nearly a week since Google Buzz was unveiled amid speculation it was going to be a Twitter and/or Facebook-killer. So, what is the buzz about Buzz now that people have had some time to use it?
In terms of sentiment, 42% of the conversations are positive, 44% are neutral and 14% are negative. This reflects the mixed reaction that Buzz has generated. Some people believe it’s a major strategic foray by Google into the world of social media, particularly because of the fact it’s built on top GMail, which has 175 million users/month. Jason Calacanis, a high-tech entrepreneur, for example, describes Buzz as “brilliant”.
This positive sentiment is tempered by people who are less than impressed with Buzz. Among the negative criticism is that Buzz doesn’t seem to have any compelling features that would prompt someone to leave Facebook and Twitter, or use them less often.
Steve Rubel, a well-known blogger and public relations executive, suggests that Buzz was created to protect GMail’s advertising revenue from Facebook, as opposed to Google looking to get into social media.
While Buzz attracted a lot of attention when it was launched on Feb. 9, the blogosphere’s interest has dropped off, perhaps because Buzz is not the out-the-gate smash-hit that many people expected.
As far as the leading keywords, GMail is at the centre of the most conversations. Not surprisingly, there are strong links to “Twitter” and “Facebook”, as well “network”.
Speaking of Twitter, Buzz has generated a lot of tweets in the past week – nearly 500,000, which isn’t surprising given Twitter users are likely enthusiastic users of Google services such as GMail and search.
What’s interesting – and different – about the conversations on Twitter is the amount of talk about privacy after people complained that Buzz was publicly disclosing their lists of followers and who they were following.
Tags: facebook, google, google buzz, Social Media, twitter
Chris Pirillo has described Google Buzz as the Windows ME of social media. Despite my initial excitement for Buzz, his statement holds plenty of truth. Buzz has immense potential due to it’s elegant integration with Gmail, but is a platform that still has many kinks.
Commenting on any feed items that have been imported from Google Reader renders an ERROR. Twitter importing is a glitch, and using feedburner to export my buzz updates to Twitter is unreliable.
For those who have Buzz it may interest you to know that you can direct people to your buzz profiles a few different ways, such as http://www.buzz.google.com/garinkilpatrick or http://www.google.com/buzz/garinkilpatrick.
Buzz has a long way to go still, but look for rapid improvements to be made since Buzz is an integral part to the success of Google delivering competitive real time search. I am confident that these wrinkles will soon be ironed out, but for now Google Buzz should be sporting a BETA logo.