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Two Scoops of Buzz
Lots of Buzz buzz is still running through the internets yet, so here's a bit more of it, just in case you aren't burnt out yet. Google has added a one-button disable option to totally remove the system from Gmail. I'm sure someone there sure wishes that had been on by default. This is partially in response to a class action complaint and follows earlier cleanup efforts as well as an apology for auto-follow. Since there is no Facebook interaction, I still wonder what traction they will get. But maybe this means the end of Twitter.
Twitter's power is that you dont have to go there to use it or update it. I've got 90,000,000 twitter apps to choose from on EVERY platform. Hell even my home automation gear from crestron has twitter interoperability.
Twitter has critical mass and support on everything.. Buzz has none of that currently.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
While a lot of people are using this fiasco as evidence that Google's a bunch of techies who don't understand users, I can't really believe that it was totally unforseen and accidental. Google made a conscious decision to leverage their existing social graph of webmail users by, as automatically as possible, turning it into an actual social-network graph. If they hadn't done that, Buzz would probably not have jump-started very quickly, but now it has a huge built-in userbase. Even if a bunch of people disable it now, they're probably still way ahead in terms of total users than where they would've been if they had played nice.
So may turn out they did know what they were doing, at least from a business perspective.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm guessing it would be the same thing he does every night ... fuck Demi Moore.
How was slashdot going to make money?
Advertising.
Yeah, Google didn't stand a chance against the likes of Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, their spunky little upstart 'gmail' thing took forEVER just to get out of beta! Can't say that anyone was really attracted to it, what with all the established options out there. Who will take it seriously?!!
No, Buzz has something better... Interoperability with -every- site out there. If the site has an RSS feed for your updates, you can bring them into Buzz really easily. If it doesn't, the site can choose to integrate more directly with Buzz.
The only thing I've found lacking in Buzz is the ability to find and follow random people. With twitter, when I'm learning Japanese, I can watch the live twitter global feed and find people posting interesting things in Japanese and follow them. Buzz doesn't have that... Yet.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
And all Google has to do is create a unique Buzz email address to send updates to (like Facebook has recently done), and you get instant support on any platform capable of sending email.
When Facebook came out with the unique email address to upload images and update status, I dumped my Blackberry Facebook app and I just use email now. So at this point, switching to Buzz would be a matter of changing the email address my pictures and updates go to.
This would make new Buzz apps for platforms trivial to implement.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
What exactly is twitter doing that couldn't be done with existing blogging sites that have email updates? Nothing says you have to write 2k words on your blog post, you could write 120 characters on any blogging site and do the same thing.
I do like the idea of pushing towards more open standards. Email is a standard everyone can agree with, everyone can interoperate with. I can send mail from my phone to someone on a mac or a pc or linux. I can swap out clients if I find one I like more. I do like the idea of transitioning these sorts of services to protocols and then you're selecting the provider you want based on how that protocol is implemented.
I see value in what Facebook does even though I dislike the way it's implemented, similar to the way I like what Exchange/Outlook is trying to do while hating everything about the way it's actually done.
There's been talk about trying to open up the silos represented by these applications. You have your data in twitter, you have your data in facebook, you have your data in google, and there's lots of duplication across each. Facebook will talk to google to import your data but that's a bit clunky and is still just putting your stuff in another silo. I like the idea of more interoperability but am also concerned about the potential for holes. I don't mind if my facebook gets hacked because there's nothing important on there, nothing personal or embarrassing. I don't put anything there I wouldn't mind seeing on the front page of the new york times. But if facebook had tight access to my gmail, suddenly a hole in facebook could become a hole in gmail. Not so good.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Volume.
If you are on the newest version, just scroll to the bottom of the screen and click older version. This is not the HTML only version, but the one just before the new interface upgrade. I find it responsive, less cluttered...and no buzz.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Google's notoriously short attention span.