Google Buzz is About Protecting GMail's Ad Dollars, Not Social Networking

One of my chief issues with Google Buzz is that there's no "there." Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc all have destination sites or apps that allow the user to mentally switch contexts from one-to-one/one-to-few communication to one-to-many. Mike Elgan touches on this here. 

This got me wondering: why didn't Google build a hub for Buzz to begin with? I suspect the reason is simple. With Buzz, Google isn't trying to create a new social network. Rather, it's trying to sure up GMail - a major source of ad revenues - from the forthcoming Facebook onslaught. 

Even though Gmail has hundreds of millions of users, they actually have much to fear. The enemy is Facebook. With its integrated chat, Facebook Connect and its forthcoming full-featured mail product, Titan, the social network giant has a good shot at syphoning users from Gmail just as Google did to Yahoo Mail and Hotmail half a decade ago. Ponder that.

In addition, here are some of my other thoughts on Google Buzz...

• After playing with it for a few days, there's definitely a lot I like. I still don't see it going mainstream - especially given the privacy kerfuffle. This will only scare mainstream users. However, that said, I bet Buzz will become an important niche player for enthusiasts much like Friendfeed was during its heyday. What's more it will encourage everyone else to up their game. 

• Yesterday on Buzz I outlined 20 ways it can improve. The product team, notably Bradley Horowitz, chimed in and said they are taking all feedback seriously. This weekend's privacy tweaks back up words with action. What else are we missing?

• Finally, tips are rolling in around the web. The Next Web and Google Operating System blogs have great tip round-ups. Most notably Google Operating System details how you can search all public updates, even people you're not following (#8). They also reveal how to save these as persistent searches (#9). As you can see from the screen grab below, this is a really handy way to search social content from within Gmail.

Serenity Now: Google Buzz is Google Wave Light, a Non-Starter

Those of you who know me or have been reading my work for awhile are probably well aware that I love Google products - especially Gmail. I even stopped using Google Reader in favor of subscribing to email newsletters from the blogs I care about so I can peruse/search them there. One less inbox that I have to manage is a good thing.

So, with that, you would naturally assume that I would love Google Buzz. Well, I just got it in my Gmail today and my first take is that it's Google Wave Light. Is the technology great? Sure. However, it's way too complex for the masses. It doesn't organize social information, it makes it even more of a mess.

Like it or hate it Facebook offers what Jeff Jarvis calls "elegant organization." Twitter, while less organized, is equally simple. Google Buzz is only a service a mother could love - maybe Sergey Brin's mother. It's the Anti-Friendfeed. Here are five things wrong with it...

1) I can't easily find my content within Gmail. I have to go to my profile page to find it

2) I can't easily hide the items from my inbox. This requires a filtering hack that mere mortals do not know even exists

3) Noise, noise and more noise - there are no lists like in Twitter or a news feed in Facebook that tells you the "top stories" or even "Best of Day" feature that Friendfeed had. A way to organize social content? A productivity tool? Hardly

4) It slows down Gmail somewhat - what happened to Google's mission to speed up the web?

5) Finally, it shows in some ways Google is losing their focus. They're getting too big and therefore launch half-baked products that take them away from their core. They are feeling the heat from Facebook and Twitter instead of remaining true to their mission to organize the world's information.

In short, Google Buzz leaves me crying Serenity Now - and I am a social enthusiast with his hands in lots of pots!

Call me when this is baked but once again Google is showing that social is really their Achilles Heel. Google Social Search is a winner. Google real-time search is also a winner. They show what Google does well. This product shows Google at their worst. So, now that I have it, I don't see Google Buzz taking off and I am tempted to even turn it off. How about you?

Facebook Pulls Lexicon Analytics Tool

Facebook has taken its promising Lexicon tool down from the site. Perhaps this happened when they pushed their new redesign. Lexicon, like Google Trends, provided limited yet interesting data on site-wide trends. You can read more about it here.

From the Lexicon site....

"Thank you for your interest in Lexicon. We are removing the Lexicon product from Facebook for the time being. We may bring components of Lexicon back in the future, but we are focusing development on our analytics tools for Page owners, advertisers and Platform developers."

Analytics remains a major focus at Facebook for advertisers and page owners. They recently pushed out a tool that lets page owners see detailed data about their individual items. Still, I would like to see the social network emulate Google more in how they share global data.

Trust in Friends Declines, Trust in Experts Rises - Social Media and PR Still Win

Last week Edelman, my employer, published our tenth annual Trust Barometer study. You can read the full report here. One of the more juicy statistics that Advertising Age and others noted is that trust in peers surprisingly dropped dramatically from 47% to 27%.

Tom Foremski says this is bad for PR:

"This is bad news for PR agencies because social media has been the ‘point of the spear’ for so many firms. This is what brings in new business."

While he's right that social media has been a big business driver, I respectfully disagree with Tom that this is bad news for the PR agencies. It won't make the PR industry's case for social media budgets any less compelling. In fact, it's awesome news. Here's why...

If you dig into the report, you'll note that the Trust data shows that we're desperately seeking out experts. This is unsurprising given the torrent of information we're all contending with. We're self-curating and in the process seeking out higher authorities.

Taking this a step further, this is where PR agencies shine. We have decades of experience positioning companies, NGOs, execs and employees in the ranks as subject-matter experts. So what does this have to do with social media? A lot. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, you name it are by far the fastest and most effective ways for an any individual or a company to build a thought leadership footprint. So, if you think about it, this isn't 2012 scenario as Foremski suggests. All it means that we'll have to work harder to build credibility through online thought leadership. If you're doing this with scale, you will win.

In addition, beyond that, we will have to do it all to break through the noise. So I don't see this as bad news at all. Richard Edelman, our CEO, sums this up best with his quotes in Advertising Age:

"The events of the last 18 months have scarred people," Mr. Edelman said. "People have to see messages in different places and from different people. That means experts as well as peers or company employees. It's a more-skeptical time. So if companies are looking at peer-to-peer marketing as another arrow in the quiver, that's good, but they need to understand it's not a single-source solution. It's a piece of the solution."

Bingo. All this means is less fluff more substance. And that's a good thing. 

Facebook Will Centralize the Social Web

Michael Arrington laments about about the decentralized nature of social content on TechCrunch today...

"The online social landscape today sort of feels to me like search did in 1999. It’s a mess, but we don’t complain much about it because we don’t know there’s a better way.

You might be sick of hearing this from me, but strongly believe that Facebook is the next Google. It took me a while to "get religion," but now I have it. Just as Google brought a simple way to search the web, my observation is that Facebook is poised to do the same for organizing and - this is key - centralizing social content

Google will continue to dominate "pull." But Facebook will aggregate content, make it social and rule "push." Using our social circle it will surface content that we care about just when we want it - and allow us to comment on it all. As more people use Facebook to connect, share and create, a network effect takes over - and the system get even smarter.

Here's an example. In my newsfeed today I saw an item from CNN about Sarah Palin. Within minutes it had dozens of comments. Some 20 minutes later it had 300 comments. Now that pales in comparison to the 2775 comments (as of this writing) that the actual story on CNN.com has. However, over time through Facebook Connect, I suspect this to become more cohesive so that you can follow the conversation in either place.

See the full gallery on posterous

Facebook has done an extraordinary job at making social elegant, simple and organized for millions. Couple this with the search deal with Bing, I believe they will be a force to be reckoned with - one that challenges Google on every turf.