5 Tips for Getting Started With Google Buzz
By Chris Garrett
Published March 26, 2010
Google Buzz is important, not because it’s the next big thing, but because it’s from Google and is bolted onto one of the world’s biggest email services, Google’s Gmail.
When a service launches with millions of users right out of the gate, we need to take notice. That said, it’s still the early days for Google Buzz. It might be a bit premature to be jumping on this bandwagon with both feet. So what should you do?
In this article I’ll reveal what you need to know about Google Buzz.
The good news is Google Buzz is not particularly complicated or new. Google has used the most basic features from other popular platforms: friends and status updates.
You can post short messages, comment and “like” other people’s messages, plus share links and photographs. All familiar stuff. Your initial friends will be from your Gmail address book and you can find other people with the usual searches for email address and name.
Here’s Google’s launch video for Google Buzz:
What follows are the basic facts and tips so you “know enough” not to get left behind, but not so much that you need to spend the next week learning yet another social networking service!
#1: Got Gmail? You Have Google Buzz
If you have an existing Gmail account, you’re likely either all ready to go or about to be. Google Apps email users are still waiting, unfortunately.
Luckily for me I already had a Gmail account from a while ago that was still working. To get started, you’re going to need that Gmail account, even if you only want it for Buzz.
#2: Get Your Personal Profile
It seems that Google Profiles will be more important going forward. Profiles is the other service that’s heavily tied into Buzz. You can find mine and fill out your own here.
#3: If You Use Facebook, Buzz Will Be Familiar
As mentioned above, it’s very much like FriendFeed and Facebook.
You add status update messages, links and photographs, and people can comment on them or “like” them. You can comment and like other folks’ stuff in return. It’s all very easy.
#4: Import Your Other Social Sites
In addition to posting links and messages, you can import your blog posts and photographs. You can even import your tweets.
That’s how I find most people are using the service right now. They’re importing their other stuff and spending just a few minutes in conversation and so on, while still dedicating most of their time to Twitter and Facebook.
#5: Listen and Friend First
While you can import all your other content, it might be worth holding off.
Add your friends, browse around and get familiar with the service before rushing headlong into importing all your stuff. Some people are already unfollowing “noisy” people.
It’s going to be a while before the “rules” of this community are ironed out. The best use you can make of it right now is connecting, conversation, and finding cool content.
Interestingly, while most excitement is about Google SEO and sharing content, a lot of people are complaining that conversation threads are moving off blogs and Twitter into Buzz, which makes it a whole new important place to listen to what people are saying.
What I Like About Google Buzz…
- Buzz is lending itself to real in-depth conversation threads (like in FriendFeed), rather than fleeting but snappy chats like in Twitter.
- Better signal-to-noise ratio. So far it is growing like Facebook without the “Farmville” rubbish.
- It’s all very familiar … but does that mean Google has no innovation in Buzz?
So far those three items do not add up to a hugely compelling reason to make this your primary social tool, but it is worth a look.
What do you think about Google Buzz so far? Please share in the comments field below…
Tags: buzz, chris garrett, community, content, conversation, email service, facebook, follow, friendfeed, friends, gmail, google, google apps, google buzz, google profile, google seo, in-depth conversation, networking, networking service, sharing content, signal to noise, social media examiner, social networking, social tool, status updates, unfollow
Friday, March 26, 2010
5 Tips for Getting Started With Google Buzz | Social Media Examiner
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Google Buzz: A Social Step Too Far - Reviews by PC Magazine
Google Buzz: A Social Step Too Far
02.16.10
It's official: I'm not that into Google Buzz and its intrusion into Gmail, my personal e-mail world.
Buzz up!on Yahoo! Google's decision to further refine Google Buzz's privacy settings is a good move. I started using the social networking
platform last week, and I have to admit that for the first time in my online social life, I feel a bit overwhelmed.
What I originally saw as a savvy move by Google, putting Buzz right inside Gmail, turned into something of a nightmare for many users%u2014even me. In the original version, once you were in Google Buzz, your contacts, public Google Reader accounts, and public Picasa photos became part of the shared Buzz network. The people you conversed with the most over e-mail and chat were, automatically, the ones you were following.In one fell swoop, Google blurred the line between public and private in such a way that no one seemed to know which way was up%u2014or what was private versus personal. It's created a fair amount of ambivalence toward Google's latest creation. In an informal poll where I asked what people thought of Buzz, the majority%u201443 percent%u2014were undecided. Of the rest, 23 percent hate it, 14 percent love it, 19 percent haven't tried it, and 1 percent has never heard of it. For my part, this Buzz experience has forced me to rethink my social strategy, and it's something I'm still working out. Apparently, I'm not alone.
Recently, a good friend of mine pulled out of social networking entirely. He is, for all intents and purposes, off the social grid. This act caught me by surprise, and I didn't know about it right away because, to be honest, he hadn't tweeted about it, updated his Facebook
account, or put it in Friendfeed. He'd been gone from the social stage long before Google Buzz even existed.
All of his accounts are dead and this makes me kind of sad. I have no idea what my friend is up to. I have to e-mail him and wait for a response in order to get an update. On the other hand, in light of Google Buzz, his move seems almost prescient. Buzz, which blends a rather personal platform%u2014e-mail%u2014with a public one%u2014social networking%u2014surely would have been a step too far for my now social-net-phobic friend.
It's almost a step too far for me.
Gmail is my favorite online e-mail system. In fact, it's my primary personal e-mail. Now it has this public face to it. Obviously, I did not have to join Buzz, though not to do so would have been ridiculous for the Editor in Chief of PCMag.com. Part of my job description is, essentially, to try new tech stuff and write about it. Even as I try new things, I've done my best to keep Gmail sacrosanct. To tell the truth, I work pretty hard at keeping my public and private lives separate. There are exceptions, but those who follow me on Twitter know that 90 percent of my Tweets relate to the work I do. Facebook is more of a personal space for me. That's one of the reasons I usually reject "reader" connection requests on the service. In Gmail, all of my contacts were, until last week, private ones. Now, there's an unnerving mix of friends, family, and professional contacts.
One of the things I like least about Google Buzz is the notifications within my Gmail inbox. I'd rather everything Buzz-related stayed inside the Buzz tab. Even inside the Buzz tab, the ever-present reminder that there are people from my personal contacts for me to "follow" is bothersome. I don't want or need to be pushed. In Twitter, there's the Follow Friday tradition, where Twitter members suggest people that you, me, and everyone else should follow. It's easy to ignore those Tweets as they roll by.
I know that Google has changed the Buzz followers from automatic follows to "suggested" follows. That's a step inthe right direction. But I don't think this marriage of e-mail and social interaction is working or can really survive.
Things we do in the digital world are typically replacements for what we did in the analog space. News Web sites replaces newspapers, e-mail replaces letter writing, instant messaging replaces phone calls, and social networks replace clubs. Clearly, today's social nets are far more amorphous than, say, a quilting or rock club. Often times, you're simply a member of the club called "The Club." Still, you decide to join and participate in the club rituals: daily greetings (i.e. "hello fellow tweeters!") and weekly events (i.e. Follow Fridays). Those that break the rules, by over-sharing or being too aggressive or unpleasant, are shunned (blocked, unfollowed) or even removed from the club.
What is the analog for social network combined with e-mail? Google Buzz, as it currently exists, doesn't aptly reflect any social interaction metaphor I know of. Having my (and others') social updates inside my once totally personal e-mail inbox is like having junk mail stuffed inside the same envelope as your personal mail.
This lack of separation between personal and private will not serve Google Buzz well and could result in more people making the choice my friend did and pulling themselves off the social grid. That won't be good for anyone.
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%u2022 Google Buzz: A Social Step Too Far
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%u2022 Google's Super Bowl Ad: A Simple, Powerful Idea
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An excellent article in my opinion.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Test Driving Google Buzz: How Does Facebook Compare? | Design & Innovation | Fast Company
Yesterday, Google unveiled Buzz, a new service for sharing short updates that's been immediately billed as direct competition for both Twitter and--more interestingly--Facebook. Today, Buzz has just begun trickling out into the real world. So how does the service stack up with Facebook? Here's a quick review.
If you're not familiar with Buzz, it's basically like a Twitter/Facebook feed on some very powerful steroids. You access it simply via a tab in Gmail. A "buzz" works about like a tweet or a facebook wall post, allowing you to post links and images in a short note shared with your Gmail contacts. And that's when things get interesting:
1. Media Integration: Buzz Wins
So far, Buzz has been integrated with Flickr, Twitter, and Picassa. You pull that off simply by logging onto those services through Buzz. Anything you post to those accounts--and mark "public"--gets shared:
Of course, Facebook allows you to do the same thing:
But really, how many people in your Facebook network link all those accounts to their wall? Facebook's integration is fiddly, forcing you to look up things like public URL's. I'm betting not many people in your network actually use that functionality, precisely because of the wonky integration process.
Moreover, even if you do start integrating accounts with Buzz of Facebook, the differences become huge. So far, Buzz is much simpler, much richer: You can integrate and curate entire photo albums from Flickr or even from a weblink since the service scrapes the article URL for images. Facebook only allows you a thumbnail. And for videos, Buzz actually lets you watch them directly in the pane, unlike Facebook, which sends you to a link out:
Those sound like minor details, but the mere fact that you can get so much media inside of Buzz means that it's much more believable as a central point from which you can track everything happening in your network. And that, really is what Buzz was after--it's trying to insert itself at the center of your content sharing life. Facebook didn't begin that way, and that genealogy shows itself pretty clearly when you start really testing its capabilities.
2. Interface: Facebook Wins
For a while now, designers have been complaining that Google's interfaces for Gmail, Reader, and all it's other services are getting no better--or perhaps even more complicated as more features are added. Google Buzz doesn't improve that situation, and might just further cement Google as a place where engineers stomp good design. (Sound familiar, Microsoft?)
Looking at the images above, you can see why: It's hard to know where to look with all that yawning whitespace, links undifferentiated by importance or usefulness, and extraneous information.
To be fair, Facebook isn't exactly beautiful. But what's most important is that it's intuitive. The proportions make sense, rather than sprawling throughout your window. It's easy to decide, at a glance, where you want to look and what's important to you. All that's hard to grasp in a screen cap, but compare the layout:
Notice how much information you see before having to scroll the window, and you get a sense of Buzz's short comings.
3. Fun Factor: Facebook Wins
Buzz works only insofar as the people you follow actually use the service, and the services its linked to. Facebook works for an entirely different reason: Because all your friends are on it, and all of them are looking to Facebook as an explicitly personal social outlet for sharing pictures and snooping on each others' lives.
Buzz doesn't have that advantage--and without personal profiles, what's Buzz except a really good Twitter client? Sure, it's great for sharing updates and images, but where do you actually want to share those? Through a dedicated, beefed up Twitter client like Buzz? Or through the network of friends you've already built up through Facebook--and which might not overlap too much with your e-mail address book?
In that sense, Facebook and Buzz aren't really in direct competition--that is, until Facebook unveils its mail service. When that happens, Buzz will certainly force Facebook to overhaul it's integration with Youtube, Twitter, and everything else (a new Facebook-AIM tie-up might be the tip of the iceberg).
Rich media capabilities versus the value of your social network: Let the battle begin.
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Topics:
Technology, Design, Google buzz, facebook, twitter, interface design, social media, media sharing, Innovation, Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Twitter Inc., Google Gmail, Flickr.com
