Google Buzz
When a huge company like Apple or Google unleashes a new beast into the wild, the interwebs blows up. The tubes just can’t contain all the peanut butter being stuffed in from every angle – Twitter, Facebook, et al. And in this internet day and age, people are always looking for the Next Big Thing. It is my opinion that Google Buzz could be that thing. The following is my Why.
People have been asking really good questions about Buzz. Firstly, why a new product? Wave sucked. Hard. Why do we need a new G-app? Gmail and Gtalk work just fine. Don’t screw it up. Second, if we do get a new product, shouldn’t it at least be remotely intuitive to first-time users? And third, will Buzz be the Next Big Thing for which we’ve all been waiting and looking?
So, (1) Why a new (Google) product? This is two questions in one. The first is, why do we need a new web app to add to the internet chaos? And the follow-up is, why should it be a Google app? The first question almost answers itself. We need a new web app because there is internet chaos. If you’re like me, you use Facebook, Twitter, several media apps (Flickr, Youtube, etc.), a chat client of some kind (Facebook chat counts here), and everybody except Joe Paterno has an email address. Wouldn’t it be great if all these services worked together? Google answers affirmatively. Hence, we have Google Buzz. The second part of the question is, why do we need a new Google app? The fact that so many people use Google already makes it a prime candidate for this kind of service, not to mention they have the funds to partake in massive expenditures and undertakings. And they kind of own the internet, anyway. This last reason is actually why people may not want Google to be the King Aggregator. I, for one, disagree. I would love for Google, the one service that I’ve been using since high school, to be the hub for all things social on the internet.
The second question concerns the usability and functionality of the product. I would first like to say that Buzz is not Wave. Wave was a nightmare, and Buzz is no such thing. Also, was Twitter intuitive for everyone? Nope. Facebook? Nope. In fact, I know several people who had no idea how to use Twitter when they first started toying with it, telling me they kept trying to “write on my Wall,” to little avail, as you might expect if you’re a regular Twitter user. There is no universally intuitive product, web app or otherwise. Wave was a complete waste of time and energy, but Buzz, I think, is different.
Lastly: will Buzz be the next big thing? I think it has the potential to be the next big thing. I won’t say positively that it will be, but I do think it stands more than a snowball’s chance in hell. Whatever the next big thing is, it needs to have several aspectual features:
- localized content aggregation — Users need the ability to access all media without leaving the site on which they find the content.
- combinatorial email/chat modality — Everybody emails. A lot of people use instant message. Combine the two. Put them in the same place.
- blogosphere integration — Nearly everybody and their mother has a blog now. And most self-respecting companies do. Integrate all of those.
That’s what I think anyway. If it has those features, it will be able to fulfill what I think is possibly another, final requirement: it needs to work more or less seamlessly with any new web apps. If it has the first three aspectual features and is capable of fulfilling the final one when it becomes necessary, this mythical product will be the Next Big Thing. Google Buzz is dangerously close. Here’s to hoping for the best. And the Buzz.
Talk soon,
Neal
