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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.
"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.