Since Facebook started on a college campus, it makes sense that they celebrate kegs. But did you know they actually have a Facebook application dedicated to the keg in their office? And they like to have fun with it.
While Keg Presence isn’t an official Facebook app, it was created and is maintained by Facebook employees. So what does it do? The app is a steady stream of information about what’s… → Read More
Google News is testing out a new design, as I reported earlier this month. It includes trending topics on the left and new personalization options. But today someone in the bucket test noticed something different. The sharing options changed. Each story can be shared via email, Google Reader, or Facebook.
Most people won’t see this. It is just in a limited test. But it does suggest that… → Read More
Fundamentally, what I liked about FriendFeed was that it gave me a way to take all kinds of social data and create a tailored way to view it. And though the idea never took off in the mainstream before their acquisition by Facebook, the desire for a service that can do this, remains. Despite their efforts, Facebook hasn’t solved this yet. And despite all the hype, neither has the new Google Buzz. → Read More
Social sharing is becoming a big contributor to traffic for many sites. While Facebook and Twitter drive more sharing than any other services, Google is trying to compete with Buzz, which is now part of Gmail but shares links to article and blog posts through Google Reader. Over the past month, according to AddThis, sharing through Google Reader is up 35 percent, with a big jump on February 9… → Read More
Google Buzz is now two weeks old. I decided to hold off on writing about it (beyond my overview on launch day), until I had a solid amount of time to play with it and gather my thoughts. Now I have. And now I will.
My reasoning for holding off is pretty simple: I was confused. For the first few hours I was sure it was the best thing ever. Then I was certain it was the worst thing ever. The truth… → Read More
Location-based services are all the rage right now. Even everyone seems to agree that the controversial Google Buzz did at least one thing right in adding a location element to its mobile site. But as great as these services are for connecting social networking with actual social activity, there is a downside we’re all well aware of too: privacy.
A new site throws this issue back into the… → Read More
A week ago Google launched Google Buzz. And Google’s 175 million or so wordwide Gmail users (Comscore) suddenly had this new and noisy addition to their beloved inbox.
It’s been a rough week since then. Both for the Google Buzz team, and those 175 million Gmail users.
Google continues to tweak the product almost daily to deal with the incredible backlash. That’s not what this post is… → Read More
As we noted this morning, Google isn’t wasting any time in responding to user criticism about Buzz. Now they’ve rolled out another set of changes to further address Buzz’s privacy issues. The biggest change involves the automatic follow system: it’s now being switched to a suggestion model, where Google will present you with a list of friends it thinks you’d like to follow, but gives you a… → Read More
Google Buzz launched with more than its fair share of privacy issues, leading to a significant backlash from some users. Fortunately the Buzz team is fixing these issues at a brisk pace. Today, they’ve rolled out a fix to a bug that would let users inadvertently expose their friends’ private email addresses using Buzz’s @reply system. Now, instead of sharing these private email addresses with… → Read More
Well, pretty much everyone screwed up this story today, so it’s time for some clarification. Despite what you may have read all over the web, Google is not removing Buzz from Gmail. At least not anytime soon.
The confusion stems from Google VP of Product Marketing Bradley Horowitz’s comments to Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan earlier today at TED. Horowitz said that Google was considering… → Read More
Merging something designed for public broadcasting (Buzz) with something inherently private (Gmail) was just looking for trouble.
Google is -deservedly – getting a lot of heat for the fact that its latest social product has a number of privacy flaws baked into it by design.
They’ve since made some improvements to the product, but that’s not where the story ends. → Read More
The danger in creating an instant social network around email contacts, as Google Buzz does with Gmail, is that the boundaries between what is private and what is public are not always clear. One issue raised earlier today is that the people you follow and who follow you are made public by default on your profile page, but are based on people who you email the most in private. You can make these… → Read More
Just two days in and Google is already sharing some Google Buzz stats and improvements. Notably, the company says that there are already “tens of million of people” checking out Buzz, and that 9 million posts and comments have been created in these first two days. They’re also seeing over 200 posts per minute from mobile phones. But amid the huge usage, Google is getting a lot of criticism for the… → Read More
Love it or hate it, everyone is talking about Google Buzz right now. And, judging from my account, a ton of people are actually using it too. The main use envisioned for Buzz was sharing, but the problem is that for content, you still need to copy a URL and then head over to Buzz to share it. Not anymore.
We’re all used to tweet buttons (like the one built by Tweetmeme), Facebook buttons, Digg… → Read More
When it came to Facebook and Twitter, it took brands a while to figure out how to take advantage of the social networks. With Foursquare, they have been much faster. But now with Google Buzz, they’re beating plenty of early adopters to it.
Samsung has already set up a Google Buzz account this morning and is already cranking out buzzes. Not only that, but they’re apparently trying to start their… → Read More
Naturally, which you launch a new product with a huge amount of hype, like Google Buzz, you’re going to want to own the .com domain name for it. And Google obtained googlebuzz.com just in the nick of time, according to a document from the National Arbitration Forum.
On November 13, 2009, Google, represented by Meredith M. Pavia (presumably, a Google lawyer), filed a complaint that BuzzNews… → Read More
Today, Google’s social strategy took a big step with the launch of Google Buzz — a new FriendFeed-like feature that’s integrated into Gmail, mobile search, Maps, and more (you can see our live notes from the announcement here). Shortly after the event, Google co-founder Sergey Brin fielded questions backstage from members of the press. Our own Steve Gillmor was there to record the conversation… → Read More
As soon as Google Buzz was released earlier today, all the early adopters piled in to give it a spin. Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail and a founder of FreindFeed, was among them and his initial reaction was: “This seems vaguely familiar . . .” Or, as he put it elsewhere, “There’s a FriendFeed in my Gmail. Sweet! 
”
It is vaguely familiar to him on various levels. Like FriendFeed before… → Read More
“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.” – Microsoft statement on Google Buzz.
When one of the big guys launches a new product, competitors generally just sit it out and let the press do its thing. → Read More
Google officially unveiled Buzz, their major step into social statuses through Gmail today at an event held at 10 AM PT. Within the hour, Yahoo PR was set in motion to let everyone know that they actually did this first, almost a year ago.
Here’s the humorous email that was sent out: → Read More
During the Q&A session today following the Google Buzz event, Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed something both humorous and interesting. When asked a question about practical uses for Google Buzz, Brin noted that he actually used the service to help him write his op-ed about Google Books that ran in the New York Times last year.
Brin noted that he was having difficulty with the article… → Read More
Now that the Google event is over, the company has started turning on Buzz for Gmail users. Here are some quick screenshots of it in action. → Read More
See our live notes from today’s Google Buzz event here.
Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they’ve never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even… → Read More
This morning, Google is hosting an event at its Mountain View, CA headquarters to show off a new social product it has been working on. Google VP of Product Management Bradley Horowitz, VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra, and product manager Todd Jackson are on hand to show it off.
Below, follow our live notes (paraphrased): → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
