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Google Buzz
- jraines 17y agoDoes anyone know if it works through Maps on Android 1.6? I just got the update on my G1 and posted an update through Maps, but it doesn't seem to show up on the Buzz layer.
- loki99 17y agoObviously you need to have 2.0+, which sucks!
- pibefision 17y agoI think that it's a great move. GMAIL has 150MM users a month, you can bootstrap anything with that userbase. and Wave?
- joezydeco 17y agoIs Buzz built with Wave? Can't find a mention anywhere, but it sure looks like Wave.
- mbrubeck 17y agoIn response to a question at the press conference, they said the UI was "inspired by Wave." (Similarly, they said that it was not connected to Google Latitude now, but "over the next year" they hope to bring them closer together.)
- yungchin 17y agoThat's what I never got about Wave - that they didn't somehow integrate it with Gmail, not even loosely. After I got a Wave account I invited a couple of friends, and they checked it out - signing in once, and forgetting about the whole service after that. So I tried including them in a few "waves", but there was no option to get email notifications of new waves! Of course they never returned, and the next time 'round I'd just email them again...
- roc 17y agoI've been thinking that they should initially roll WAVE out as plumbing. They could transplant GMail/Buzz/Google Talk/etc to run on Wave without forcing people to learn the interface up-front. Users would be building up content 'in' Wave and Google would be slowly integrating the features that Wave makes easy. Then the Wave interface (the biggest stumbling block for most) can be introduced as an optional power-user interface; but wholly compatible in case people want to bounce back and forth as they ease in and backward-compatible with people who aren't ready to take the plunge. (fully backward compatible, in the case of other GMail users) I just don't think Wave is there yet.
- drats 17y agoI presume that integration will be what they are aiming at with their operating system.
- levesque 17y agoWave is still choppy for me.
- agotterer 17y agoDoesn't add a Buzz option to my gmail. Working for anyone else?
- larsr 17y ago"We're still rolling out Buzz to everyone, so if you don't see it in your Gmail account yet, check back soon." (doesn't work yet for me either)
- r11t 17y agoDuring the live event they mentioned that it might take up-to a few days for Buzz to show up in Gmail for everyone.
- jkincaid 17y agoTry accessing it from Android/iPhone (buzz.google.com). I can access it on my phone even though it isn't popping up in Gmail yet.
- jm4 17y agoWhen I go to buzz.google.com from an Android phone I get redirected to a Mobile Help page listing the supported phones. Is this happening to anyone else? [edit] It looks like only Android 2.0+ is supported and the HTC Hero still runs 1.5. Lame.
- Pahalial 17y agoIf you use the mobile UI and have someone comment on your post, it will send the thread to your inbox. Trying to reply to that thread will then force-update your gmail to include Buzz (or at least, it worked for me.)
- robgough 17y agoThe same thing didn't work for me unfortunately.
- 17y ago
- intellectronica 17y agoIs Google becoming the new Microsoft? Not in the evil sense, but in the lame me-too products that rely on brute force (their huge install base) and no innovation to hopelessly try to compete sense.
- hexis 17y agoI think they also are probably releasing products in order to confuse competitors and developers. Joel on Software calls this "Fire and Motion" when Microsoft used to do it. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html
- intellectronica 17y agoThat's an interesting perspective. That would sort of put them in the 'evil' bucket, and I really don't think they are (or maybe I'm being naive?)
- rgrove 17y agoThey're certainly doing their best to hijack the "Buzz" product name away from Yahoo!.
- thwarted 17y agoOr the buzz.com domain from AT&T. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079765 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079765 AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor - The telco's buzz.com site lets users' "favorite" local vendors and services.
- dunk010 17y agoThey already have a namespace clash http://buzz.blogger.com http://buzz.blogger.com
- cantastoria 17y agoGoogle has always been this way as far as I can tell. They're basically using Microsoft's old strategy of "clone it and give it away so we can sell more of Windows" only with Google it's ads. The difference is everyone still loves them. Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre.
- Zak 17y agoI find it very odd that they depict the iPhone on top of the N1. To me, that conveys a position of higher status for Google's competitor and that doesn't make much sense.
- TotlolRon 17y agoMaybe the page designer has a "tell" :)
- Raphael 17y agoWell, it's true. There are more iPhones in use than devices running Android.
- chaosmachine 17y agoEveryone recognizes the iPhone, very few will know what the N1 is.
- jkincaid 17y agoThere are many, many more iPhones and iPod Touches out there than there are Nexus Ones. Google wants as many people as possible to be using this, so they're showing these people that it will work with their devices. They'll save the 'superior device' angle for other features where the size of the user base is less important (GPS Navigation).
- pibefision 17y agoCheck the API (http://code.google.com/intl/es/apis/buzz/ http://code.google.com/intl/es/apis/buzz/)
- pibefision 17y agoAlso http://twitter.com/Google_Buzz http://twitter.com/Google_Buzz
- adrianwaj 17y agoI wonder if Google's API docs on the whole are too comprehensive. Most people just want to get to the meat fast, and then consume it. Twitter's API doc is one page.
- tdmackey 17y agoThought it was a little funny to see that http://buzz.com/ http://buzz.com/ seems to be a similar unlaunched service from AT&T with the same name. It seems they've managed to roll up what a lot of others were doing into a seemly nicely integrated package. I would like to think that this will give location based networks the push they need to become more mainstream.
- thwarted 17y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079765 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079765
- mrfabbri 17y agoAccessing http://m.google.com/app/buzz http://m.google.com/app/buzz from an iPhone works whether or not you see the buzz label in gmail. You can use Firefox with the "User-Agent Switcher" add-on set on iPhone to try it out.
- ashishbharthi 17y agoiPhone webpage works for me but it still have issues when you post updates. I tried posting two updates, it kept going but updates were never posted.
- jokermatt999 17y agoSimilarly, buzz.google.com worked on my Droid, despite not having the buzz link in gmail.
- jfno67 17y agoJust tried it out on my Android, can someone tell me why I'll go to Foursquare now... This is the best checkin interface yet.
- jganetsk 17y agoBecause Foursquare incentivizes you to use it a hundred ways from Sunday, including games and promotions.
- jfno67 17y agoYes that could be it, but I can tell you in new cities incentives are not big. When I see Buzz with Google Local Listings (with coupons), and place page I feel like I will not be using Foursquare that much. I'm probably wrong though, I was excited about Wave too.
- ableal 17y agoEarly warning at Blogoscoped: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1090344 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1090344
- mrtron 17y agoIt is a well engineered twitter. Will be interesting to see if it can gain enough momentum to be useful. I am betting yes - due to the simpler embedding of media.
- grandalf 17y agooddly I don't see buzz anywhere in my gmail even after clicking on the link to enable it...
- marciovm123 17y agothey don't roll out to everyone simultaneously. think A/B testing.
- mmastrac 17y agoIt's not rolled out to everyone in Gmail, but mobile should work (http://m.google.com/app/buzz http://m.google.com/app/buzz) for anyone with an iPhone or Android device. [edit] I missed an 's' in the URL. Android doesn't seem to like that URL, but the iPhone does.
- Semiapies 17y agoThis 404s in my Droid; http://buzz.google.com http://buzz.google.com works, though.
- Joe_Bananas 17y agoYo dawg, I heard you like web 2.0 so I put a web 2.0 in your web 2.0 so you can web 2.0 while you web 2.0.
- david927 17y agoThat was both funny and witty. Come on, HN, lighten up!
- david927 17y agoOk, listen up, HN. I love this community because you're smart and ambitious, but we need to have a talk. The Winter Olympics (& World Cup) are coming up. If we're lucky and live beyond our life expectancy, it's one of maybe 20 we could possibly see. 20. That's how short life is. A long time ago I was getting into film direction and saw a contest in town for 8mm film shorts. So I wrote a screenplay, gathered eight of my friends together, and in one long day, we shot it. Weeks later when it came back from the labs, I took it to a guy I knew (who was also involved in putting the contest on) who had a projector. I was so excited. I was so proud of what I had done. I began rehearsing, in my mind, answers to such questions as, "How did you achieve such genius with so little background in film?", "What was your inspiration?", etc. The projector spun the film; I held my breath. We couldn't see anything; I hadn't used enough light. (In all my books on film direction, lighting an 8mm didn't come up.) The guy said, as he walked me out, "But you had fun making it right?" I took it almost as a taunt. I thought, "Fuck fun. I didn't want fun. I wanted that fucking film to turn out." So you're on Hacker News because you like technology? That technology is going to be obsolete in at most a few Winter Olympics from now. You're on HN because you have a startup? If you have a great idea and you execute well with a great team... the odds are not even remotely in your favor. Ask anyone in the business. Not even remotely. Today when I think back, do you know what I remember from that 8mm film I made? How much fun my friends and I had making it. We had a blast. That day is a wonderful, glorious memory. Whether or not the film turned out was always irrelevant. Everything you think and love and see and know has an expiration date on it. 20 Olympics -- at most -- if you're lucky. And when you're old and smoking that last cigar (because fuck it) and you close your eyes, what will you remember? Do you know? I'll tell you. Not the film. You won't even remember what the film was about. No, you'll remember the day you shot it. "But you had fun making it?" Did you? It can sound like a taunt, but it's not. It's everything. God, be ambitious. Be smart. Good for you. But have fun. Most of all, have fun. Laugh, HN. Let your hair down. Have sex. Drink wine from the bottle. Dance like madman. Have fun. For the love of God. You have 20 and it's all you'll ever have. Have fun.
- alexandros 17y agoOne thing that just struck me, is that google/gmail will not be banned from workplace computers as often as fb/twitter have been. This alone will be a significant advantage.
- gxs 17y agoI've been fortunate enough to never have been employed at a company where the employer things its good practice to ban certain websites. How common is this? What field do you work in?
- alexandros 17y agoThankfully in academia things are very relaxed. I just thought of a friend who has this problem and then I realised I know at least 2-3 people in office jobs who have similar issues. I'm in the UK btw.
- yummyfajitas 17y agoAcademia is indeed relaxed. Most academics I know have their .forward file point to their gmail.
- joeyo 17y agoIndeed. Gmail is just about the only successful pine killer I've ever witnessed.
- frognibble 17y agoIt's common enough that Gmail has a feature to allow blocking the chat feature and not all Gmail. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34330 http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...
- levesque 17y agoThen it is safe to assume that gmail will have a feature to block buzz... problem solved?
- kerringtonx 17y agoI'm more excited to use this than Wave. =/
- kloncks 17y agoIn the picture on the website, why is the Nexus One being covered by the iPhone? It should be the other way around.
- eam 17y agoI agree! Maybe they're trying to "not be evil".
- highstakefever 17y agoWhat I don't understand is how people seem to be okay with Buzz being built into gmail. Don't we have enough of social networks that steal our time? Now we have one in or inbox? Not super excited about that fact.
- robgough 17y agoI'm more concerned about how it will work over IMAP - or does IMAP just ignore the buzz mails?
- robotron 17y agoThen turn it off. I'm okay with chat in Gmail - when I want to chat. If I don't want to chat I simply sign off. Simple enough. Options are good.
- highstakefever 17y agoI understand you will be able to turn it off, just like you can logout from Facebook. That's not the issue. It's the idea of creating something of this kind in a "holy place" like your inbox.
- albemuth 17y agoG1 won't run it, needs Android 2.0+ I guess it's good that they're not letting old platforms slow down development, but FFS, a bit over a year and the G1 can't run any of the new stuff. They should never have sold it with such weak hardware... Still waiting on an 850 Nexus :(
- fnid2 17y agoI wonder if, when a company crosses a threshold we all think violates a Nash equilibrium, we start to oppose the company. With this move, Google is declaring war on a host of web companies that are heretofore thriving and collaborating and making tons of money. Every dollar of advertising that Facebook makes is a dollar or even more from Google. Every minute that facebookers facebook, google isn't showing them ads and isn't getting click throughs and this amounts to a vastly larger sum of money than any new search engine or aggregator or individual media company which google has already rendered moot to a large extent. This is real time search which everyone has been asking for with all the data stored on google's super voluminous uber-fast lightning machine with its neurons and axons keeping the world connected and communicating. Here it is and we don't want it. The competition is for virtual real estate. Everywhere there is blank space on the screen or blank time in the consumer day or a blank wall in the virtual world, there will be an ad on it, just as today there are ads in nearly every physical space: Public transportation, Bar room mirrors, big screen tvs... Nothing is safe. No one is safe from Google and they have crossed the nash equilibrium where everyone is competing against them, including the websites where they get their content and the websites where people go to pass time.
- yungchin 17y ago> I wonder if, when a company crosses a threshold we all think violates a Nash equilibrium, we start to oppose the company. Do you mean "we, the people" or "we, the people who think in terms of Nash equilibria"? ;) More seriously: I don't think I care about how big the company is. Rather, I care about the quality of the product, and whether I am free to leave it for a competitor's product. Google is actually trying to make it easy for you to leave if you choose to, and take your data with you - they're even inviting you to report their failures in that regard at www.dataliberation.org - so that's quite good. If they don't make it easy for me to interact with Facebookers/Twitterers/whateverers, I'll end up visiting Facebook/Twitter/whatever instead, and vice versa - what's wrong with that? I'm not an economist, but this sounds like a healthy competitive landscape to me?
- MikeCapone 17y agoIndeed. There are small companies that are horribly restrictive with their products/services, a lot more than some big companies. It's about quality, not size.
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoWow. Lookout lots of web companies. You're wallowing along in the middle of the road and this huge truck is barreling down on you at 100 kph. The truck's name is Google. For the less metaphorically-inclined, Google has so much money and is doing so much development that they've reached the point that they are actively trying to obsolete hundreds of companies. You can certainly argue that perhaps these companies deserve to be replaced. Google is becoming the Wal-Mart of the web.
- techiferous 17y agoThey're not necessarily barreling over other smaller companies; sometimes they buy them which is a welcome exit for the founders.
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoI agree. It's a great thing for those companies. My point is that they have so many resources and so much raw computing power on the line that almost by accident they can burn to rubble dozens of different business models. Overall some consolidation is probably a good thing, but I am continuously reminded of WalMart. WalMart perfected retail sales in much the same way as Google is perfecting rich internet applications. WalMart was able to deliver products cheaper than anybody else. Google in many cases just gives stuff away. WalMart drove out lots of small shops. Google seems to be doing the same. WalMart had a goal of dominating the market. Google wants to store every piece of data on the planet. I'm perfectly happy shopping at WalMart -- they do a great job of providing me stuff at the best prices I can find. I'm not so convinced that I am as happy getting all of my internet data from Google. I'm NOT saying they're some kind of evil empire, just I'm beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable about them. It looks like whatever is the flavor of the week there's Google out there peddling their version of it.
- Scott_MacGregor 17y agoNow who in here will be the first to develop a slick dedicated Windows desktop sidebar client for this, or an Outlook plugin? If it was a Microsoft product, it would probably run right on the desktop in a sidebar. Then they would have a developers conference for it in Las Vegas with a free brunch too. [A different promotional stratagy than Google].
- zitterbewegung 17y agoI think this is basically location aware microblogging. This might be pretty disruptive in the space with the integration and the ease of use. Also, auto discovery is done pretty well.
- chintan 17y agoBrizzly cloned? I find that the Buzz interface is highly similar to Brizzly which was similar to Gmail developed by ex-Googlers working on Gmail/Google Reader. Its like all deja vu. O God I'm so buzzed out!
- chintan 17y agoTry the Near-By option on iPhone in NYC. Its definitely a Foursquare killer.
- kesun421 17y agoWatched the Buzz video a few times, does it look like a simpler, faster, easier to understand version of Google Wave???
- prabhu-pd 17y agothis one's a winner!
- prabhu-pd 17y agofirst it givith then taketh away
- Semiapies 17y agoGoogle is the new Microsoft in one sense: if they say or announce anything, geeks will spend more time talking about how they hate/fear/distrust Google than about the product.
- jsz0 17y agoI'm going to reserve final judgement until I actually get a chance to use the service and see the direction Google wants to take it. My first reaction is not positive. This feels like Google's Microsoft Money moment Go into a market with an established leader, use your size and dominance to undermine the competition just because you're the 800lbs gorilla and you need to be fed at any cost. There doesn't appear to be anything new here. Just a Google logo.
- enneff 17y agoHave you looked at the Geo features? The integration with several existing services? Of course it is not a new idea, but to say "just a Google logo" does a great disservice to the team who've been working hard on this project.
- jsz0 17y agoNo, I haven't got it yet. That's why I'm reserving judgement of the actual service until I can use it. Google's engineers are fantastic and I'm sure it's a good service. My concerns are purely on the business/competitive side.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- csmeder 17y agoI cant get Buzz to show up in my gmail, what am I doing wrong?
- gcb 17y agogoogle is going the way of older internet giants. Their main focus is search and adwords ...and more recently snooping dns. Now instead of letting facebook do their thing and google offering competitive ads, they choose to do facebook thing. Now what? They are going to clone all the sites that their users spend more than 15minutes on? They`re going to spread their peanut butter too thin.
- badave 17y agoIt's try to buy, and if that fails, try to compete. At Google's size, it would be very, very, very difficult to spread their peanut butter too thin, and their Superbowl Ad indicates that they are focusing on what everyone knows them best for and only dipping their feet into other pools that they can't buy into.
- kerringtonx 17y agoI like Buzz after using it a bit more on my iTouch (still not available on my computer yet ... :/ ). Still trying to decide if I like Buzz better than Foursquare. It's really fun checking in and competing with your friends, but if you don't live in a populated area like myself, there seems to be not as much interaction. When I signed on with Buzz, there were already people interacting. Sharing tips about restaurants, what they were doing for the day, how they liked Buzz, and etc. Both are definitely fun though! Anyone get to use it on their PC? How is it??
- levesque 17y agoIt cannot even access facebook?