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Google’s new foray into social media and geolocation is cool and innovative, but the Buzz probably won’t last.
Have you tried Google Buzz? This new social media and geolocation product integrates with Gmail and works much like Twitter or FriendFeed as a way to share or broadcast status updates. You can also use it on mobile devices through a Web-based application that uses GPS to locate you and tag your updates with location data. When these updates are shared publicly, they appear on a Google Maps interface, both in the mobile and full Web versions. If you happen to use Google Latitude, there is now a Buzz layer. It’s a cool product, but we’re not sold on the execution or Google’s ability to “be” this product.
There are a number of reasons why Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL have failed at social media. Despite having huge audiences, talented developers and boatloads of cash, none of them have made significant inroads to the social web. One of the reasons is the futility of brand extension. As consumers, we tend to associate a brand with one thing and one thing only. Google is search. Yahoo! is homepage. Microsoft is Windows. AOL is email or instant messaging. It’s tough to break out of these pigeonholes. By the same token, tremendous brand loyalty and market dominance can be built around this one thing. When a company tries to leverage and expand its brand, though, failure typically follows…if not immediately then in the long term.
Granted, Google has been successful with non-search products. Maps, Gmail, and Reader come to mind. But these are also core competencies. These products are basic Web services and utilities. They are consistent with the Google brand and how we understand it. Google makes life easier. It doesn’t make life more social.
It also appears that Google’s brand folks phoned this one in. Doesn’t Yahoo! already have a Buzz product? And doesn’t buzz subside by definition? Instead, Google should have taken the Orkut route. It’s no coincidence that the one social media success Google has does not carry the Google brand.
As many bloggers have pointed out, Google Buzz is just an odd fit for Gmail. It’s a square peg in a round hole. The people we email are often quite distinct from the people we Facebook or Twitter. Plus, only a small percentage of the people we email actually use Gmail. There is no synchronicity on any level. Google would have been better served to launch with an original brand and prompt users to notify or pull in their Facebook friends and Twitter followers. This is standard launch procedure for any new social application. Because these are our social networks. Google could still use all of its marketing horsepower to promote this new brand, at which point consumers would uniquely associate it with this new product and experience rather than having to sub-categorize it with Google.
With regard to the mobile version, which has the most potential, Google is deploying it as a mobile Web app, just as it did with Google Voice (which was rejected as a native iPhone app). This presents some inherent limitations for Google Buzz, such as taking a photo or video from within the app, and for some reason it appears that the location information (GPS) isn’t as accurate through the browser as it is with a native app.
The good news, however, is that Google Buzz (like FourSquare and Gowalla) is location-based by design. Geolocation is part of the product’s DNA. This is where Twitter and Facebook will have the greatest challenge in becoming true geolocation platforms. They have to compel their users to opt-in by enabling geotagging of Tweets and (eventually) mobile Facebook updates. Most won’t even realize these features exist. Plus, the broad nature of Twitter and Facebook content isn’t inherently geographic, so it amounts to a lot of noise for those seeking real-time information about a location or geographic area. Google Buzz has the potential to guide users toward creating content with geographic relevance. Shared publicly on a large scale, it has the potential to provide some measure of geospatial awareness.
If only it wasn’t called Google Buzz.
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1 Google's Social Media Buzz Kill | Max Gladwell // Feb 17, 2010 at 12:53 pm
[...] initial review of Google Buzz concluded that it was a worthy effort in theory but that the brand and execution were lacking. With [...]
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