Back in March of last year, we noted that Google Buzz, Google’s shiny new social network at the time, was getting smoked in terms of referral traffic sent our way, by a dead man, FriendFeed. It turns out, Google’s own Analytics service was undercounting Buzz because it resides in Gmail, which uses HTTPS, which strips out referral information. In other words, most Buzz traffic could only be inferred, not seen. Still, after months of looking over the data, I’m not convinced that Buzz actually sends any amount of meaningful traffic whatsoever. The same is not true of the newly launched Google+ so far.
Yes, it has only been out for a week at this point (and is still only available to a very limited number of users), but based on what we’re seeing, the social network is already sending a large amount of traffic our way. → Read More
Two days ago, we removed the Google Buzz button from the top and bottom of each post on TechCrunch. No one noticed. Not a single person said a word about it. It wasn’t until earlier today when I tweeted about it that we got some feedback on the change (most of it being: “oh, I didn’t even notice”). As I tweeted, that in and of itself says a lot.
The issue of Buzz being a viable sharing platform used to be somewhat of a hot-button issue. When I wrote a post last March noting that traffic coming our way from Buzz appeared to be less than that of a dead man, FriendFeed, many folks got up in arms. It turns out, my data was flawed — but it wasn’t necessarily wrong. You see, since Buzz runs within Gmail, which defaults to HTTPS, it scrubs the referrer data before sending the traffic our way. So, conveniently, the only way to measure Buzz traffic was to infer it. Like a black hole. → Read More
Google Realtime Search is nothing new. For months it has existed as its own area within the search engine’s navigation to search for things happening in realtime. But up until now, that has meant mainly Twitter (thanks to Google’s data deal with that company). But earlier today, it appears Google flipped the switch to make Realtime Search a lot more useful. Namely, they’ve added results from services like Quora, Buzz, Gowalla, and yes, even Facebook.
As pointed out in this Quora thread, it looks like Google flipped the switch to include the data from the services listed above (as well as others) this afternoon. The fact that Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo and CFO Marc Bodnick voted up this Quora posting suggests this did in fact just happen today. → Read More
Today at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman took the stage for a chat with NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes. The main point of the discussion was Hoffman’s belief that “Web 3.0″ is data. More specifically, the platform part of data. But that’s old news, Hoffman gave that talk at SXSW a few weeks ago. More interesting were his thoughts on what Internet companies should do with their data.
Or rather, what they shouldn’t do with their data. → Read More
By now you may have heard that Google today settled a privacy lawsuit filed by a group of Buzz users. What’s sort of odd though is that Google actually emailed all U.S.-based Gmail users (Buzz resides within Gmail) to let them know about the resolution. And, apparently, also to let them know that they’re not getting a dime
Instead, the $8.5 million settlement money will be placed into an independent fund which Google says will support organizations working on privacy education and policy on the web. The search giant promises to do their part to help better educate users about privacy as well. → Read More
As we first reported late last week, Lars Rasmussen, the father of both Google Maps and Google Wave, has left Google is heading to Facebook. As we suspected, part of the reason is that Google pulled the plug on Wave barely a year into its existence. “It takes a while for something new and different to find its footing and I think Google was just not patient,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald over the weekend. And that brings up another question. Google’s other big social experiment this past year, Buzz, also hasn’t taken off yet. What happens next?
Like Wave, Buzz launched with much fanfare in February of this year. But unlike Wave, Buzz was available to many users right of the box, and instead it was security issues and misunderstandings that led to its initial stumbles. The Buzz team worked quickly to smooth those out, but now the service has a much more serious issue: indifference. → Read More
Up until a few months ago, I was using Facebook the same way I was using Twitter. That is, I was allowing anyone to follow me. But it was different. With Twitter, anyone can follow me without my approval. On Facebook, everyone needs my approval. Though perhaps ill-advised, I was simply blindly approving anyone. Then I stopped.
There was no single reason why I switched my Facebook habits, but I decided that I was going to start using the service the way Facebook made it seem it should be used: befriending only actual friends. I was a bit more lenient — I friended anyone I’ve actually met in person. Everyone else? Gone. I purged several hundred people, cutting my “friends” in half in one day. But now I’m realizing that’s not good enough.
With the launch of Facebook Places, there’s a lot of talk about it being creepy or a potential security nightmare. I think all of that is and will continue to be largely overblown. That said, I’m also sure there will be legitimate causes for concern with the feature — but mainly because people aren’t using Facebook the “right” way. Nor do I think Facebook actually wants them to. → Read More
After your initial surge of people connecting to your social graph what do you do to strengthen it? Launch a “who to follow” feature. It worked for Facebook. It’s working for Twitter. And now Google Buzz is going to give it a try.
As they announced tonight in their Buzz feed, the next time users load up the Buzz tab in Gmail, they should be greeted with a box suggesting other people to follow. Google says these will be based on people you frequently email and/or chat with. It also depends on your social connections on other networks (aka your social circle), and activity on Buzz. Only people with public profiles will appear as suggestions, Google says. → Read More
TweetDeck is preparing to release its first Android app in beta tomorrow. I got a hold of the beta build and some screenshots. The app adds some new elements which go beyond TweetDeck’s popular iPhone app, and even introduces some new elements not yet found in its desktop app. But this app shows the direction where TweetDeck is going. As CEO Iain Dodsworth noted in a blog post yesterday that it “also represents the future of our iPhone and iPad applications.”
The mobile app, which is TweetDeck’s first foray onto Android phones, supports multiple streams beyond Twitter, namely Facebook, Foursquare, and Google Buzz. (The desktop is also multi-stream, but the iPhone app only supports Twitter and Facebook). The biggest departure, though, is a blended stream that combines updates from all four services, color-coded with different backgrounds for each one. TweetDeck’s other apps maintain a separate column for each stream. → Read More
When I first heard the news that Google Wave was dead last week, I was surprised. I wasn’t surprised because it was a thriving, successful product (obviously, it wasn’t). I was surprised because of the gushing I heard about it from within Google leading up to and immediately following its introduction. To hear them tell it, this was the future. So I was obviously surprised that they only gave the “future” one year to prove itself. And that’s being generous.
Obviously, I knew part of that gushing was the same bullshit hype and marketing that any company applies to any new product. But it really did seem as if some key executives — everyone from Vic Gundotra to Sergey Brin — were genuinely excited about Wave. And rightfully so. As I wrote at the time, it was ambitious as hell. → Read More
As you may have heard, Google Wave is dead. But why is it dead? Google CEO Eric Schmidt took some time today after his panel at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA to answer that.
When BBC reporter Maggie Shiels asked about the reasons behind the product’s demise, Schmidt noted that Google liked the UI and a lot of the technology behind the product, but it simply to take off. “We try things,” he said. “Remember, we celebrate our failures. This is a company where it’s absolutely okay to try something that’s very hard, have it not be successful, and take the learning from that,” he continued. → Read More
Real time search engine OneRiot is now tapping into Google Buzz. So now, content shared on Buzz will now be indexed in realtime search results available through OneRiot’s API and the the third party developers who build apps on top of the search engine’s API.
Realtime search results will now be incorporating what is being shared most by Buzz users. This also means that the 150 partners that use OneRiot’s search API will also now see content shared by Buzz users. And OneRiot will be incorporating Google Buzz into its Trending Topics Engine, which finds hot topics by analyzing the realtime conversations across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Digg. → Read More
Google Social Search is a good idea. You take regular Google search results and intertwine them with related elements that your contacts have shared on various social networks. But there’s one big barrier to entry. In order for your contacts to automatically share elements, they have to link up their various social profiles to their Google Profile page. A lot of people are simply not going to do that. So Google is changing things up a bit and making it easier to get at social data.
Starting today and rolling out over the cource of this week, Google will begin looking at items you share on Buzz and crawling elements from those social networks to use in Social Search as well. For example, if you link up your Twitter feed to your Buzz page, even if you haven’t linked it to your Google Profile, you’ll now start seeing results from your Twitter social graph in the results. → Read More
No matter the social service, a common key feature is the ability to reshare something. Facebook has “Share,” Tumblr has “Reblog,” and, of course, Twitter has “Retweet,” to name a few. The feature provides a simple way for users to do something social without having to do much themselves. And today, Google Buzz is gaining its own such feature — but don’t call it “Rebuzz,” instead, it’s called simply “Reshare.”
When added to Buzz’s current arsenal of “Comment” and “Like” (and Email), Reshare completes the social circle that most of its competitors have set up. It works exactly as you’d expect: if you see a Buzz post you like that you want to share with your followers, simply go to the bottom of the post and click the Reshare button. An input area will drop down and you’ll be able to add your own comment on top of whatever Buzz you’re resharing. This will then get injected back into your followers’ Buzz streams. → Read More
It was one year ago at Google I/O that company unveiled one of its most ambitious projects to date: Google Wave. Sadly, ambition doesn’t always equal success. In fact, you might say Google Wave was too ambitious. It was promising to be too many things — it needed focus. And it needed polish. Now, all this time later, Google believes it finally has both.
Today, Google is announcing that Wave will be open to everyone. This includes not only consumers with Google accounts, but also Google Apps customers. The project is now a part of Google Labs, where it will remain as work continues on it. But much work has already been done — if you haven’t tried it in the past few months, now is probably a good time to revisit it, as is it much more stable and faster than it was in the past. And it’s full of some new features that should make it more obvious what it can be useful for. → Read More
Yesterday, I moderated a panel at TiEcon featuring the heads of product for Google, Twitter, and Facebook — an interesting group, obviously. It was a good, long discussion (hopefully I’ll have the full video to post soon). But definitely one of the most interesting points of the discussion was when I asked Bradley Horowitz, a Vice President of product management at Google, why Google Buzz doesn’t import tweets in real time? His answer was, well, interesting.
Users of Google Buzz will know that the service is awful at importing tweets. Currently, the import is done in bulk at the end of each day, resulting in a barrage of tweets in streams. It’s so bad, that many users unsubscribe from others who set their Buzz account to auto-import tweets. So why does Google do this? Well, it’s complicated. → Read More
You may remember that soon after Google Buzz launched, our crack developer Andy Brett made the Internet’s first Google Buzz Button, which you could use to share our stories to the new service. That button, while quite clever, was what some developers might call an “ugly hack” — it used Google Reader to share stories, because Buzz hasn’t offered a native way to do it. Today, that changes: Google has just launched its first set of official Google Buzz Buttons, allowing sites to integrate Buzz sharing with a snippet of code. If you want to see what the buttons look like, look up! We’re one of Google’s launch partners, so the official Buzz button is already live. You can grab the new buttons here.
Alongside the launch of the buttons, Buzz is also being integrated into Meebo, and widgets like ShareThis, Shareholic, AddThis, and AddtoAny, all of which are commonly used to share stories. The button has also been integrated into some other popular sites like The Washington Post and The Huffington Post. → Read More
Even though Google’s Buzz has drawn criticism for privacy issues, and has been deemed an overall frustrating experience, Google is not giving up on Buzz altogether. Google just adjusted its settings for Buzz, and today, the search giant is integrating Buzz into its latest version of Gmail For Mobile.
So now, you’ll see Buzz as a tab in your inbox on your phone when you access the mobile version of Gmail within your browser just like you do in the desktop version of Gmail, complete with the little Google Buzz icon. Buzz in the mobile version of Gmail will include all the basic functions such as liking the post or commenting. → Read More
When Google announced its big jump into the social stream with the launch of Google Buzz back in February, the company thought it was doing everyone a favor by having users auto-follow the people they emailed and chatted the most with. That was a mistake, and the heat was turned on quickly by the broad press, vocal users and privacy pundits.
Two days after launching (prematurely), Google tweaked the product to make it clearer for new users what was going on behind the scenes when they click the ‘Buzz’ tab, and they made even more changes two days later.
But those changes only affected new users, and not the – reportedly – millions of people who gave it a whirl in the first four days after launch. Later today, Google will start prompting all existing users to review their existing privacy settings upon launching the service. → Read More
My bad — maybe.
Earlier today, I reported that Google Buzz, Google’s new social sharing service, was sending less traffic than FriendFeed, a service which has been a ghost town in recent months. It turns out there’s probably a good explanation for this. You see, in January, Google started defaulting all Gmail traffic to the HTTPS (secure) version of its domain. Previously, it was defaulting to the regular HTTP (unsecure) domain. As a result of this change, all traffic referrers are scrubbed before being picked up by services like Google Analytics. → Read More
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