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Spam Hits Google Buzz Already
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Despite only being launched this week, spammers are already targeting Google Buzz, the search engine's social network." If my buzz box is any indicator, the spammers are pretty much the only people actually using Buzz, and until Facebook can integrate, I wonder if that will change. The Times also has a followup on Google's Apologies following various privacy bumbles throughout the launch of Buzz.
... until Facebook can integrate ...
The only way Facebook would integrate is if it didn't view Buzz as a competitor in anyway. But Buzz is a competitor already in some respects. The damned thing keeps asking me to integrate with my Picassa account. And it is already integrated with GMail and GChat. So you've got ad revenue, messaging and pictures ... now Buzz needs finer tuned privacy control and a developer platform to be a direct competitor with Facebook. That last one is a big sticky mess though and Facebook seems to have done as best as possible with it.
... devoting time and resources to that endeavor makes even less sense. Facebook will sacrifice interaction between it's large user base and the few Buzz-only people in the name of maintaining its superiority. Really it's sad because the user loses out of being able to transfer and interact with users on Buzz ... but when you're as big as Facebook, you just don't care about those kinds of integration competitor benefits and 'features.'
Hilarious that Google got bit on privacy concerns. Facebook learned the lengthy hard way on that one but it does give me hope that people are not entirely offering up their privacy to Google without batting an eye. Maybe the general public is not as doomed as we thought?
Anyway, there is no way in hell Facebook would validate Buzz's existence by integrating with them. It would just give their users who already use GMail a chance to seamlessly transfer over to Buzz while keeping up with their archaic Facebook contacts. It would be potential suicide for Facebook to do such a thing if/when Google keeps up expanding Buzz.
Personally I think Buzz targets another market but losing any number of users to Buzz does not make sense in anyway
My work here is dung.
I think Buzz targets people who desire a very simple interface. It seems to perform a lot better on my slow machine than Facebook but is negligible on my main box. Honestly I haven't experienced any Spam on Buzz at all. Don't you have to follow the Spam bot or hacked account to get the Spam?
It's missing a lot of options, I guess time will tell if that is the intent or merely TBD yet. I do like how it's integrated with Google Reader. I share a lot of my news offerings with my followers. I don't like that it wants me to integrate with Picassa. I simply have too many Google contacts (some Slashdot readers I've never met!) to have them looking at my pictures!
So the one thing that Buzz has over Facebook is Aardvark. I signed up for that three or four days ago and have asked a question (with very positive results) and answered a few questions. I didn't get quite what I wanted out of answering questions although I think the people that answered my question did a pretty good job. How this is different from Yahoo Answers or Wiki Answers seems to be that it's tightly integrated with Buzz and GChat. Also it actively finds things for you to answer. I'm guessing what Google has with mining your e-mail and chats and searches it will use to locate experts for your questions and also pair you with better questions you're more capable of answering. A lot remains to be seen as to whether or not this is an actual beneficial addition or some more of the bloat a Facebook application would have to offer one.
Yes, I have already made two book purchases off of those suggestions from my question. Note that a problem with GChat caused two of my questions (which I tried to designate as separate) get slotted into one question. I could just hear the software thinking: the second question is about authors, he must be continuing his thought.
Personally I'm not leaving Facebook for Buzz. But I'm not decommissioning Buzz. I'm keeping it as a sort of News social network much like The Auteurs and Afternoon Records Community are for my movies and music respectively. Granted none of these niche networks get as much time as the all encompassing Facebook, they still exist harmoniously in the bag of sites I visit. I recognize I'm probably an outlier though.
My work here is dung.
If there's anything I've learned over the years watching technology, it's that if everyone is suddenly climbing aboard a certain technology, it's time to find the next big thing.
Social computing may be really hot right now, but I'm wondering what the next big thing is going to be. First we had personal websites, then we moved to blogs, then to social computing and tweeting. What's next? What are you working on or with that is the next step in technological evolution?
"If my buzz box is any indicator, the spammers are pretty much the only people actually using Buzz, and until Facebook can integrate, i wonder if that will change. "
Wow, way to make to make yourself look silly submitter:
http://mashable.com/2010/02/14/google-buzz-column/
"Google Buzz's Skyrocketing Usage
While it's still very early into Buzz's life cycle, initial indications show that Google has a hit on its hands. Linking Buzz to Gmail's millions of users has clearly brought people into the company's new social domain.
Google has only released two numbers so far: there have been over 9 million posts and comments in about 56 hours, amounting to around 160,000 posts and comments per hour. That's even more impressive if you consider the fact that most users didn't get Buzz until Wednesday the 10th.
The other number: over 200 mobile check-ins per minute, nearly 300,000 mobile check-ins per day.
Those numbers are simply stellar."
Every major blogger is using Buzz now and some of them are saying they already have a larger Buzz following in just a few days than they had with other social media sites that they spent years building up.
What makes Facebook so good is that it's all tied to people - even the fake accounts need to seem to be people.
When you enable social networking for everyone who thought they were signing up for a mailbox, you're naturally going to cause a mess. Social networking is about the walled garden, and the security it gives you in terms of who you're talking to.
The underlying problem is one of anonymity and the Internet, and finding a way to verify identity without a walled garden. If Google is looking at innovating, they need to find a compelling way to bridge the anonymity gap.
Somehow I think making a list of people who aren't spammed (yet) isn't a very good idea...
When ideas fail, words become very handy.
For years now, it's been "Gmail is so great", "why don't you use Gmail?" I've been that curmudgeon who has these strange ideas about privacy and not entrusting too much data to one company.
I felt vindicated the other day when my wife freaked out upon seeing people she had emailed with on gmail sudden on her new friends list in the Google Buzz system that she never signed up for, along with the suggestion that she share photos with them and other private data about every action she takes on any system owned by Google.
On Facebook, at least you went into it *knowing* that everything you post there gets shared with every person you once spoke to in a grad school class who friended you randomly three years later. Google has insidiously roped you into using a bunch of disconnected services that were great and generally free and all the while, you've known that sure, they collect data they can use for advertising to you, but it's all so goddamned warm and fuzzy, what's there to worry about?
Suddenly, you find that Google Reader, Picasa, Gmail, etc. are all part of a social networking service you didn't intend to sign up for and Google is trying to push you into sharing everything you do with everybody you email with.
I consider this utterly, well, evil. Deceitful. Sketchy. This stuff needs to be totally opt-in.
I helped my wife turn off all the "sharing" features of Buzz. But could not find any way to completely opt-out of Buzz. There didn't seem to be a way, other than to cease using Gmail entirely. I consider that vile.
No spam here... Compared to Facebook and those incessant applications everyone keeps using. I have quite literally turned off everything but allowing friends to post on my wall and I still get invites to make someone's farm bigger or stupid greeting card invites. I see no option to deny all applications forever, only individual ones as they are sent to me.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.