Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past few days, Google just entered the Social Media World- here are some quick initial thoughts. (and if you haven’t heard about Google Buzz, it’s ok, because being under a rock isn’t always a bad thing)
What is Google Buzz?
Combine Gmail and the status updates you find in Facebook. Throw in a photo and link sharing, and you have a real-time update of what your friends (who need gmail accounts of course) are doing. There is obviously much more functionality here, but those are the basics for now, we’ll cover the nitty gritty in a later post.
The Pros
- Relatively easy customer interface that sits alongside your gmail inbox. For heavy users of gmail.com, this is a good thing. If you push your gmail to your phone or Outlook/Mac’s Mail, well you might not use it that much.
- No limits. Unlike Twitter, you aren’t limited to 140 characters. Who knows, people may begin to start blogging via Google Buzz?
- Mobile. Seamless integration with your mobile device with geo-location as well. So you can see what people are saying and where they are saying it. Fairly similar to FourSquare and those who use Twitter with geo-location turned on.
-Content aggregation. Not surprisingly, Buzz allows you to integrate with other products, so when you add photos to Picasa, share something on Google Reader, watch something on YouTube or blog about something, your friends on Buzz, will get “buzzed”. Note that you can’t sync with Facebook…
The Cons
- The Buzz “stream” isn’t chronological. For those of us used to Twitter and Facebook, updates are chronological, but not exactly in Buzz. Google adds the latest comment on anything to the top of the Buzz stream. So, if one of your friends posted some great pictures on Buzz 10 minutes ago, But if you have 13 people (and complete strangers mind you) commenting on someone else’s buzz, then your friend’s post gets slowly moved to the bottom. Google- pay attention here!
- Giving people so much room to say something and share something may really clutter things up. That’s what makes Twitter so good….
- What makes a Google Buzz “friend”? You may now get followed by other people using gmail/buzz. Does that mean you should follow them back? Twitter users probably will, but facebook-only users (vast majority of people) probably won’t. They’re comfortable with their Facebook friends because they share a common friendship around something. The only thing that connects fellow buzz users is a gmail account..
General Thoughts
-Nice early entry by Google. I think Google is still in the “test and learn” phase.
- Don’t jump on the bandwagon quite yet- Google will (should) probably tweak things in the next few months to make the user interface better. The lack of a chronological stream is quite confusing
-I think success of buzz will be directly related to not how many people use it, but simply how people use it. If people start adding all of their content to buzz, it will be a lot of content for the everyday user to digest- like drinking from a firehose.
-Don’t expect integration with Facebook- ever. I can’t imagine Facebook every letting them “in”. Remember that Facebook has 400 million users, and Google only has 176 million gmail users.
Video Description of Buzz
Still want to learn more? Here’s a quick video for you.
Ok, Interview #7 of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers” series. Today’s interview is with Steve Garfield.
About Steve
Hey this is Steve Garfield from SteveGarfield.com I’m author of the book Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business, and founder of Boston Media Makers. Through speaking and consulting I teach people how easy it is to put video online.
1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
My favorite habit is Stephen Covey’s ‘seek first to understand then to be understood.’ I love learning things and then sharing what I learned. I’ve been doing that for years, in person and on my blog, and that led to writing my book.
2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do and why?
First of all I have say that actually don’t have a work day our work schedule. I’m working all the time so I could be working maybe 4 AM, 6 AM, 8 AM. Time doesn’t matter. First thing I do check mail, then check twitter.
3. What makes you efficient with your day?
What makes me a fission is a deadline so for example if I’m editing a video I know I have to get it done by the end of the day I will focus on getting that video done and what I do is try and exclude watching all types of social media.
4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
My favorite business book of all time is 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey. I love that book and I try to be values based and as I said earlier, seek first to understand then to be understood.
5. 3 things on your desk right now/ 3 things you can’t live without
Three things on my desk so the first thing right front of me MacBook Pro totally runs everything I do all day long every day. Second thing is a nice external hard drive. I finally found a good one. I like it to Seagate external FireWire drive and the other thing that I love that I have a my desk is Sharpies. I love keeping lists and then crossing things out when I get them done with a nice black line big thick black line
6. Habit you want to kick in 2009
I want to get rid of this insane check-in check-in everywhere. It’s crazy. What would love to see is new technology that would auto check me in.
7. Habit you want to form for 2010
The habit I want to form in 2010 is actually get out of habits. I’ll look for some new opportunities or new things are are new ways of doing things . I’m going to try and keep an open mind on new possibilities and then try and stop the pattern of doing the exact same thing over time. Otherwise I love what I’m doing and look forward to new opportunities in 20-10. I’m not going to call it 2,010 either. 20-10!
BONUS- here’s a picture of Steve in his office…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevegarfield/376681198/
Photo credit- Melanie Stetson Freeman
Last week, how much time did you spend on the computer? How much time in front of the television? How does that compare to five years ago?
It’s my hunch that in the next five years, your internet bill will go up, and your cable television bill will go down.
More and more people are being entertained online, and the following statistics from comScore paint a pretty interesting picture from November 2009.
- 84.8% of the total US internet audience viewed online video.
- The average online video viewer watched 12.2 hours of video.
- 128.1 million viewers watched more than 12 billion videos on YouTube.com (94.3 videos per viewer).
- The duration of the average online video was 4.0 minutes.
As online video continues to grow, you are going to spend less time in front of that television. Why be beholden to cable/networking programming? Do it on YOUR schedule. Just head online your for news, weather, and sports highlights or head to hulu.com or netflix.com to stream some video.
It’s not just me thinking about it, the New York Times wrote a compelling argument last month in favor of “cable freedom”.
Think about it, why did Pepsi back out of its 23 year advertising relationship with the Super Bowl in favor of a year long CRM campaign.?
If you’re a sports fan, don’t worry, the networks are catching up to viewing games online. NBC’s Sunday night Football can be viewed in HD on your laptop (and you get SIX different camera angles) and just wait until the Olympics show up online…
So, before you go out and get that new flat screen TV, maybe wait a year or two. The next generation flat screen tv will just plug into the internet, not cable tv….
