Google Buzz is Google’s latest attempt at socializing it’s tools. It’s been compared to Twitter, Facebook and even FriendFeed. Some say that it has the potential to steal market share from those sites, while others think it’s impact will be far less than that. Personally, I see it becoming a part of that mix rather than replacing any of them.
For people already on Google, Buzz interacts almost immediately with everything they already have. A quick overview of features:
- Integrates with Gmail inbox and Google RSS reader
- Displays updates on Google Profile
- Imports status updates and content from other social networks
A video tour:
So far, I think it more closely resembles Facebook in that you really only see updates from people who are in your own personal contact list, and it’s unlikely that I would want to add people I don’t really know since it would give them easy access to start emailing me. It also resembles Facebook in the way that you can comment directly on updates, keeping conversations together.
The search aspect here is very interesting. It seems convenient that Google’s real time search came out right before it launched Google Buzz, and as expected, Google Buzz updates are showing up under the latest results heading in the search engine results page. However, there’s no way to specifically go and search Google Buzz directly, the way that you can search Twitter.
That leads us to how brands should integrate Google Buzz into social media strategies. On the purely social side – I have some reservations. It would be simple enough for a brand to create a Google account and import feeds from other social networks into Buzz and then start publishing content straight through Buzz as well. However, since the brand would be unlikely to have “contacts” in the way the real Google users do, they wouldn’t have anybody readily available to listen to their Buzz feed. And the lack of specific search capability within Buzz (besides actually searching for individuals by name) makes it harder for the “discovery” of that Buzz feed to happen.
Some brands have already started using Buzz and there’s been mixed reactions. Since Buzz mentions show up in the inbox, when a brand uses a person’s name it can come off very spammy. People may be forgiving of you cluttering their Twitter feed but they’re not going to tolerate you taking over their inbox.
On the SEO side, it could be a great way to get all of a brand’s social media feeds indexed and served up by Google. Although the sites that Buzz imports are already highly ranked in Google (YouTube, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, etc) so it might not have a huge impact.
For listening purposes, it needs to be monitored. I think initially most people will simply be importing their feeds from other networks, but as people adapt to the new system and some people start using it as a primary social network, there could be conversations happening there that are highly relevant to the brand and, conveniently or not, optimized for search.
Here’s the short-term recommendation: Go get your brand name on Google and grab your buzz account. Start listening, following relevant people from your other social networks and ease into it. As the community starts to develop you can begin to take cues from them as to etiquette for mentioning people, commenting, and sharing. We’ll be working on that over here and as we start to feel out the best practices for this new space, we’ll keep you updated.
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