Daily Bits

google buzz

Adios, Google Wave! Is Buzz Next?

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All things come to an end, even the good ones; or maybe, most especially the good ones. For the longest time now, Google seems to have had a golden touch. It has reached such great heights, but even such a big entity makes wrong judgment calls every now and then. With Google Wave, it seems like one of those things.

Yesterday, an announcement on The Official Google Blog finally put an end to speculation about Google Wave. Launched around a year ago in June 2009, Google Wave generated tons of interest and excitement – not so different with many other Google products. The interest did not prove to be enough, though, and even the most hardcore fan has to say goodbye.

Here’s a snippet of the announcement:

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

There’s good news at least – fans will have till the end of the year to use the site. Users will also have the tools to extract all the content they’ve put in there.

Now I am wondering…will Google Buzz suffer the same fate?

Google Buzz Now Has Reshare, Not Rebuzz

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For Buzz users, have you wanted to share an interesting buzz that you want to share with your other Google Buzz followers? Are you tired of the copying the buzz and pasting it to a new buzz just to let your followers find it?  Google finally gives a solution. Nope, sorry folks its not called “rebuzz” but rather a more correct and dandy tag called “reshare.”

If you’re familiar with Twitter’s “retweet,”  well Google Buzz Reshare practically works the same way. You found and interesting Google buzz post from your followers, click on a link, add an annotation or any comment and then hit the button to publish it as a new buzz on your Google buzz account. Yes, in two clicks, Google made its Buzz product more social.

In addition, “resharing” a buzz creates a new buzz that contains link to the original post. And it creates a buzz thread as soon as more followers started resharing the buzz to their followers as well. Now, when two or more Google Buzz users share the same thing to you, the buzz is collapsed to avoid cluttering your Google Buzz inbox. Sounds fair?

On why Google implemented its buzz sharing feature this way, the Official Gmail Blog tells us the following explanations: [Read more…] about Google Buzz Now Has Reshare, Not Rebuzz

Google Buzz Posts Are All Auto-Feeds

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Here’s an interesting look into the current buzz being posted on Google Buzz. The study was conducted by Post Rank which tracks engagement activities on over two dozen social networks and recently added buzz posted on Google Buzz.

During their analysis of  Google Buzz feeds, Post Rank found some interesting points regarding all the noise that have been building up on Google Buzz.

Turns out, approximately 60% of the content on Buzz is from Twitter! Many users have hooked up their accounts to automatically repost their content from Twitter either directly, through FriendFeed, or via another service.

The runner up to Twitter? Another set of bots! This time, it’s automated alerts from feeds, e.g. CNN publishes a new story and a bot pushes it out to the Buzz stream. All in all, those two sources account for almost 90% of the Buzz stream, and even in the remainder there is a long tail of Google Latitude updates, ping.fm, and others. Unfortunately, there just doesn’t seem to be much original and/or human-generated content in Buzz. Perhaps you shouldn’t hurry to install that Buzz button on your site just yet…

What does this all mean. If you’re a social media marketeer eyeing to implement some marketing campaign on Google Buzz, well you might want to hold back for awhile as there is no clear chance that your campaign would reap higher engagement.

It seems that the activities on Google Buzz right now are all automated. Well, of course you might be engaging with “real people” in your own Buzz streams and that’s pretty understandable since you’ve selected people to follow on Google Buzz yourself.

But then as what Post Rank’s study yielded, majority of Google Buzz posters are actually non-human.

Google Buzz Gets An Official Share Button

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If you  liked Buzz since day one chances are you’ve probably clicked on those Google Buzz share buttons developed and implemented by top blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch. You may have also used some “unofficial” follow me on Google Buzz buttons in your blogs or websites. The thing is implementing those unofficial Google Buzz buttons maybe a tedius process and may require some codings and all.

But that was the case before, not until now. Google has just launch the official Google Buzz sharing buttons. Starting today, you’d be seeing more of those official Google Buzz share buttons on top sites which have partnered with Google. These include The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Glamour, YouTube and others. These buttons will make it easier for you to share interesting news items you find on the Internet and post it as updates to your Google Buzz accounts.

Likewise, those third-party share widgets/buttons such as Share This, Shareholic and other have also started implementing the Google Buzz button in their widgets.

Now, to post the Google Buzz button in your own blog/site, you can grab the Javascript code from this site and paste it to your site’s code.  You can also add the official follow me on Google Buzz button to your blogs/sites by also grabbing the code for it from the said site.

There you go, some new ways to spread the buzz and if you don’t like Google Buzz – add some more noise to the Buzz sphere.

Google Wants You to (Re)Confirm Buzz Privacy Settings

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True to what has been reported a couple of hours ago, Google has started asking Buzz users to confirm the new Buzz privacy settings. You’ll get the notification page the next time you click on the Buzz tab on your Gmail account.

Google also explained why they are asking Buzz members to confirm their privacy settings again. According to a post on the Official Google Blog – “we quickly realized we didn’t get everything right and moved as fast as possible to improve the Buzz experience. ”

Google has been making a number of changes since issues on privacy started to escalate such as replacing the auto-follow with suggestions for people to follow instead.  The good thing about this setup is that Buzz users are given the freedom to choose people that they will follow.

Now, this is well and good for new Buzz users after the new privacy policy was implemented. But for those who started using Google Buzz earlier, the auto-suggest may not have worked. So, Google is issuing the Google Buzz confirmation page again to ensure that old users are given a chance to change their privacy settings or accept these settings as it is.

The confimation page is the same privacy settings page given when you first activated Google Buzz. When you get it now, you are free to edit, unfollow and follow people before finally accepting it.

So, are you going to accept the new Google Buzz privacy settings? Or have you totally deactivated Google Buzz already?

In Case You Missed It, You Can Also Create a Buzz on Google Reader

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So, have you started “buzzing around?” Has Google enabled Google Buzz on your Gmail? Or have you tried it on your mobile phone?  How was it? Revolutionary? Innovative?  Well, in case you might have missed it due to the influx of buzz that Google has created with the launch of Google Buzz, the service is actually also available in Google Reader. That is you can also post the items from your Google Reader as a buzz on your Gmail.

To activate this feature, all you need to do is to link up your Google Reader account to Gmail Buzz. And while you’re there, you might also want to link up other current services that are tied up with your Google Profile.  Once set up, everything that you share on Google Reader will be automatically be posted to your Gmail Buzz. That’s why Google Buzz is called a social sharing service.  Once your Reader item is posted as a buzz, people who are following you will be able to post comments to the items you shared.

The good thing about this, in case you didn’t notice it, is that the people you follow and who follow you on Google Reader are also the same set of people in your Gmail Buzz.

This is why I like Google Buzz so far. It’s like partaking of a new product without exerting to much effort on learning something new. Something which Google Wave did, and which is gradually leading it to its downfall.

Got one more room for a person to follow? Follow me on Twitter, I mean on Google Buzz – http://www.google.com/profiles/noli725.