Buzz Off!

About seven days ago I reactivated Google Buzz. This morning I again turned off the service after reading Leo Laporte's latest blog post, Buzz Kill. I feel now how I felt about the service when it was released a year ago, why do I need another social network and doesn't this replicate my Twitter account. Personally I believe I did not see or take full advantage of the service because I am no longer using a smartphone and in particular an Android smartphone.

I think that I spend more than enough time using Facebook, Twitter and Gmail. Despite spending a large portion of my day in the Gmail interface I have no desire to Buzz. I think that is an interesting observation because I already associate Gmail as a communication tool so why do I not want to micro blog in the same interface. Well I think it is because it feels like Buzz had been shoe horned into an already successful. Like all brilliant online products Gmail is susceptible to mission and specification creep.

I am starting to wonder if Google Buzz will be killed off as Google Wave was on the 8th August. Google does not get social networking in the same way they understand search and mobile phone operating systems. For all intensive purposes Google as produced the next generation of mobile phone operating systems. Something I am sure Nokia is very sore about.

Google demonstrates repeatedly that they have the capability to engineer brilliant products but when it comes to the softer disciplines to create communities around their new online products I find them lacking. I don't believe however that the failure of Wave and possibly the failure of Buzz is solely the fault of Google. I believe that there are bigger issues in play with these products.

1. The market is already over subscribed with similar and complementing services. Facebook and Twitter already have the market well served for sharing web content, status update and photos.
2. There was too much buzz. The echo chamber of news and blogging created a storm of stories which I believe over hyped both products so whatever resulted was doomed to under deliver.

I believe these two issues are by no means an exhaustive list but I feel that they do begin to cast a light on the reasons for the failure of Buzz. There is not enough space in the market when sites like Facebook boast over 500 Million users.

Finally I would like to leave you with the idea that Google is and has become the new Microsoft because of their strong engineering prowess and failure to fully deliver softened products for the masses. It is my belief that Android will become the defacto standard for mobile operating systems because of the involvement of other manufactures. Google some how needs to create the skills to within their culture to round off those square corners left my engineers to make their news products more accessible to the public.

Links

1. Buzz Kill
2. Update on Google Wave

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