Buzz Facebook and Others
When I first heard of Google Buzz, I was pretty confused on what it was. It sounded like email mixed with what facebook was already doing. It also sounded like it was not going to do well, because not everyone already has a gmail or googlemail account. It was also very similar to google’s already existing service, GOOGLE WAVE. Then one day I sign into my Gmail account to see there is automatically a GOOGLE BUZZ tab. This confused and annoyed me. I didn’t ask to join Google Buzz, why was it there? After clicking on it, I see that only 1 of my contacts actually used it so far. A few weeks later, I felt like checking it again, to see that still, only one of my contacts used it. I’m not sure if this is due to google’s lack of advertising or explanations, but both sure played a part in Google Buzz’s failure.
To this day, only one contact actually seems to use it, and even then, it appears they’ve used it four or five times. Now, google buzz could have been a very useful and great way to stay in contact with my gmail contacts. The only problem being that many of my family members use other mail services, rendering Google Buzz useless from the start. I also consider myself very computer savvy, and Google buzz lacked any explanation from the beginning. It was very confusing and hard to understand and looked like nothing more than an address book that already existed in Google Mail. It seems like the whole internet consensus is that Google Buzz is very useless. Some people still haven’t even heard of it due to it being hidden behind Google Mail. If Google Had advertised it and explained it much better, it might be a vital part of connecting with family and friends today. For now, websites like Facebook will continue to dominate that.
