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Well Google's play book used to be push stuff out as beta or a labs feature. Let only the very sophisticated users opt-in and try things out before pushing it o
by freshfunk 17y ago
Well Google's play book used to be push stuff out as beta or a labs feature. Let only the very sophisticated users opt-in and try things out before pushing it out to the general public.
This was obviously rolled out in a very different fashion. Plus they attached it to Gmail which is a tried-and-true product. Buzz feels very beta to me.
If Buzz we rolled out under labs or a separate interface I'm sure that there wouldn't be as much backlash as there has been.
- frio 17y agoPerhaps, but I think for this particular market they had no choice but to launch big. Look at Orkut, their previous (dead) attempt at a social network. Facebook is extremely entrenched now, and there's little to no incentive to users to opt-in to something else. To attack the power of Facebook/Twitter, this was really the only way of doing it (although I agree, perhaps a Labs feature would have been a better way of introducing the concept for a couple of months at first).
- mreid 17y agoI agree with you that Google has their work cut out for them trying to get into this market, but that doesn't excuse their mistake. If you think it does then I am very curious to hear how you felt when Microsoft leveraged their desktop strength to compete with Netscape in the browser wars.
- smokey_the_bear 17y agoOrkut is hardly dead, just because a product isn't popular in your market doesn't mean it's dead.
- derefr 17y agoIt's dead for the market that includes its developers as members. Reflexively dead, as it were. It becomes a lot harder to care about maintaining something once you yourself no longer get anything out of using it.
- smokey_the_bear 17y agoOrkut engineering is in India and Brazil.