5 ms·

As Buzz Sounds More Like Crickets, Does Google Need To Be More Patient?

19 points by jedwhite 16y ago

davidj 16y ago
Aside from the horrible name, it was a huge invasion of privacy. Immediately people who I haven't talked to in years were able to find out all the detailed contact information on everyone I associated with and my clients for the brief time until google disabled the "everyone can see all of your email contacts" feature. It really show you what google thinks of your privacy. Even now I don't know for sure if I have it disabled, and there is really no way to know. For a while google made it so that if you accidentally clicked on "Buzz" it re-enabled the "everyone can see all of your contacts". Maybe they fixed that, who knows.
ianb 16y ago
I believe (through entirely indirect sources) that Buzz is successful inside Google in a way Wave was not. Unlike Wave they have at least managed to create something that is successful even when it's not successful -- I can happily read Twitter and some blogs through Buzz without feeling left out, while enjoying some of the advantages of Buzz when they are available. Wave didn't feel like that to me... it was potentially super-cool while being practically entirely uncool. I don't think it was going anywhere... and that indeed may have been because Google as an organization wasn't capable of doing what it takes to make a novel interface (at least in terms of Lars' inferred critique). That's the criticism of Buzz that is most obvious and resolvable from this article as well -- Buzz looks blandly Googlish, no more or less. When integrated into Gmail, sure... but why should my Google Profile (which is also the container for deep links to my Buzz posts) be so incredibly boring? The good parts of Buzz? Honestly it's just the balance of interaction and community. Facebook has a solid (and useful!) basis as an interpersonal communication tool. I use it with family and friends and it provides genuine social value. Twitter fills the professional side... and Twitter is great for pithy comments, but I've had enough with pithy comments and the celebrity stance -- Twitter succeeds in popularity because of its constraints, but for those same reasons it dodges any thoughtful discourse. It's just not for me any more, and while I'm not wedded to Buzz there needs to be a not-Twitter... and I kind of suspect Twitter can never be that, because maybe there needs to be 3 things (even though it only feels like there needs to be 2 things).
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  Wave just needed a good emacs mode to have been made for it.
nl 16y ago
(I'm a big fan of Buzz, and I loved FriendFeed enough to build a very similar service a couple of years ago) One of the problems with Buzz and similar apps is that they don't allow people/celebrities/marketers a way to control the view of the conversation like twitter does. In Buzz (and blog comments, Facebook, FriendFeed, HN and just about any other service invented) the comment thread is attached to an original anchor post. That seems like a feature from the usability point of view - or at least I always assumed it was a feature. BUT, it turns out that if you are famous you don't want random people's names and comments attached to your own. On Twitter, Oprah can say something and no one else sees the millions of people who doubtlessly beg her for giveaways. Government departments can tweet and not have to deal with the politics of approving/disapproving comments on their posts, etc etc. Buzz etc promote interaction, but it turns out the the grief associated with interaction simply isn't worth it after a certain point. I'd note that almost all the Twitter leadership group use it continuously. OTOH, while there are assorted (great) Google developers and PMs using Buzz I haven't seen any senior leadership using it - let along interacting on it (OTOH, most of the FriendFeed leadership did use it - maybe that's what kept it going). I'd also note that this problem applies to Facebook, too. I think that in many cases Facebook pages are run by professional marketing people, so that pushes back the critical level of grief somewhat I'd love if there was a better explanation for this. If this theory is true then I'm not sure what Google can do to fix Buzz - attaching a broadcast-only mode would be a difficult change to make.
- wyclif 16y ago
  while there are assorted (great) Google developers and PMs using Buzz I haven't seen any senior leadership using it Depends on what you mean by 'senior leadership.' Guido van Rossum uses Buzz and interacts with users there.
  - nl 16y ago
    Depends on what you mean by 'senior leadership. Anyone listed on this page: http://www.google.com.au/intl/en_au/corporate/execs.html http://www.google.com.au/intl/en_au/corporate/execs.html
zmmmmm 16y ago
Buzz had a lot of early problems but one thing I really like and use is that I can easily make posts to private groups of my contacts. So I have a bunch of people who want to hear about baby news and they are in one group and they are getting buzzes about the new baby and there are others in the professional sphere who get different ones, and I can choose to post privately to those groups, or to everyone or to make it public - and this is all an integrated part of Buzz. I won't / can't post this kind of stuff on twitter or Facebook (both being too public in different kinds of ways) so Buzz fills a useful and important niche for me.
jsz0 16y ago
Google can't kill Buzz. They need to maintain the illusion of having some social networking strategy. It's better to have people scratching their heads wondering what Buzz 2.0 will look like than to admit you're hitting the reset button again. They didn't have to worry about this with Wave because no one seems to have understood what exactly Wave was or what it was competing against in the first place.

19 points by jedwhite 16y ago

Aside from the horrible name, it was a huge invasion of privacy. Immediately people who I haven't talked to in years were able to find out all the detailed contact information on everyone I associated with and my clients for the brief time until google disabled the "everyone can see all of your email contacts" feature. It really show you what google thinks of your privacy. Even now I don't know for sure if I have it disabled, and there is really no way to know. For a while google made it so that if you accidentally clicked on "Buzz" it re-enabled the "everyone can see all of your contacts". Maybe they fixed that, who knows.

ianb 16y ago

I believe (through entirely indirect sources) that Buzz is successful inside Google in a way Wave was not. Unlike Wave they have at least managed to create something that is successful even when it's not successful -- I can happily read Twitter and some blogs through Buzz without feeling left out, while enjoying some of the advantages of Buzz when they are available. Wave didn't feel like that to me... it was potentially super-cool while being practically entirely uncool. I don't think it was going anywhere... and that indeed may have been because Google as an organization wasn't capable of doing what it takes to make a novel interface (at least in terms of Lars' inferred critique). That's the criticism of Buzz that is most obvious and resolvable from this article as well -- Buzz looks blandly Googlish, no more or less. When integrated into Gmail, sure... but why should my Google Profile (which is also the container for deep links to my Buzz posts) be so incredibly boring? The good parts of Buzz? Honestly it's just the balance of interaction and community. Facebook has a solid (and useful!) basis as an interpersonal communication tool. I use it with family and friends and it provides genuine social value. Twitter fills the professional side... and Twitter is great for pithy comments, but I've had enough with pithy comments and the celebrity stance -- Twitter succeeds in popularity because of its constraints, but for those same reasons it dodges any thoughtful discourse. It's just not for me any more, and while I'm not wedded to Buzz there needs to be a not-Twitter... and I kind of suspect Twitter can never be that, because maybe there needs to be 3 things (even though it only feels like there needs to be 2 things).

waterlesscloud 16y ago
Wave just needed a good emacs mode to have been made for it.

nl 16y ago

(I'm a big fan of Buzz, and I loved FriendFeed enough to build a very similar service a couple of years ago) One of the problems with Buzz and similar apps is that they don't allow people/celebrities/marketers a way to control the view of the conversation like twitter does. In Buzz (and blog comments, Facebook, FriendFeed, HN and just about any other service invented) the comment thread is attached to an original anchor post. That seems like a feature from the usability point of view - or at least I always assumed it was a feature. BUT, it turns out that if you are famous you don't want random people's names and comments attached to your own. On Twitter, Oprah can say something and no one else sees the millions of people who doubtlessly beg her for giveaways. Government departments can tweet and not have to deal with the politics of approving/disapproving comments on their posts, etc etc. Buzz etc promote interaction, but it turns out the the grief associated with interaction simply isn't worth it after a certain point. I'd note that almost all the Twitter leadership group use it continuously. OTOH, while there are assorted (great) Google developers and PMs using Buzz I haven't seen any senior leadership using it - let along interacting on it (OTOH, most of the FriendFeed leadership did use it - maybe that's what kept it going). I'd also note that this problem applies to Facebook, too. I think that in many cases Facebook pages are run by professional marketing people, so that pushes back the critical level of grief somewhat I'd love if there was a better explanation for this. If this theory is true then I'm not sure what Google can do to fix Buzz - attaching a broadcast-only mode would be a difficult change to make.

wyclif 16y ago
while there are assorted (great) Google developers and PMs using Buzz I haven't seen any senior leadership using it Depends on what you mean by 'senior leadership.' Guido van Rossum uses Buzz and interacts with users there.
- nl 16y ago
  Depends on what you mean by 'senior leadership. Anyone listed on this page: http://www.google.com.au/intl/en_au/corporate/execs.html http://www.google.com.au/intl/en_au/corporate/execs.html

zmmmmm 16y ago

Buzz had a lot of early problems but one thing I really like and use is that I can easily make posts to private groups of my contacts. So I have a bunch of people who want to hear about baby news and they are in one group and they are getting buzzes about the new baby and there are others in the professional sphere who get different ones, and I can choose to post privately to those groups, or to everyone or to make it public - and this is all an integrated part of Buzz. I won't / can't post this kind of stuff on twitter or Facebook (both being too public in different kinds of ways) so Buzz fills a useful and important niche for me.

jsz0 16y ago

Google can't kill Buzz. They need to maintain the illusion of having some social networking strategy. It's better to have people scratching their heads wondering what Buzz 2.0 will look like than to admit you're hitting the reset button again. They didn't have to worry about this with Wave because no one seems to have understood what exactly Wave was or what it was competing against in the first place.