The announcement yesterday of google buzz has come at a time not surprising at all. For it is the same day, when we got the statistics on the most visited sites in the world, where for the first time, Facebook beat google at online page views by 16million people.
Some pundits therefore suggest that Google is threatened by Twitter and Facebook. And to survive, they have decided to "kill them". Actually it is the battle for attention, what one google executive aptly put as "“finding the signal in the social networking noise".
But is it really going to work? Think of it this way, google wave, which was to tap into this "niche market" in the social networking arena, has never really picked up. Instead, it fizzled out unceremoniosly and has since releagted to the backseat.
The challenge here is to intergrate e-mail services to social networking, of which Facebook fore-saw and provided for. The Value proposition here was one-stop shop to get in touch with friends. But Twitter took it a notch higher by providing a platform for shaving among other things videos. And of course, many journalists and publishers warmed to it.
And lest I forget, yahoo is also not left behind. Though they have not expressely coined a name for it, they want to lure users to be able to share, prioritize e-mails and to remember birthdays. Will this pick up? My hunch is it wont! Why? Because of the same reason of coming late with an idea that Facebook had already taken and ran away with.
Finally, the T.Vs and other media forms are challenged to up their game. Statistics show that an average Kenyan spends 70 minutes on Facebook, equal number of minutes he/she takes watching T.V. What does this mean for an advertiser? Tell me what you think.
Broadcast television as we now it is in the brink of becoming a fossil, unless it is able to adopt one of the most important model that makes the internet so popular: choice. Viewers want to control what they view and when they view it. Broadcasters out there, here's your challenge.
ReplyDeleteAs far as google vs. facebook is concerned, I wouldn't right off google just yet. With the kind of reach it has, the number of websites it advertises in and the backing of resources and inherent popularity, I imagine that this can turn out to be quite a battle. Remember google mail challenged yahoo and quite successfully for a share of the email market, and google may have one edge: being such a key resource to many organisations, it is not a website that is likely to be banned in many organizations (as facebook commonly is). If they can structure their social network so that it is tied into the core search engine module, in a non obtrusive way and with options that make it discrete in viewing, it might be the only way that people chat during work hours. This could be the key to their success.
Brian, I agree with you, however,
ReplyDeleteThe primary issue which is being noticed is that the Gmail contacts which a user uses most frequently, Buzz automatically starts following these people and makes the list public. This also means that strangers can see who Buzz users have been in contact with.
A website said, ‘Imagine … a wife discovering that her husband emails and chats with an old girlfriend. Imagine a boss discovers subordinate emails with executives at a competitor.”
Until recently, the privacy in facebook was just as bad. It is only recently when they introduced the feature that allows you to control who sees your posts and status updates.
ReplyDeleteI must agree with you though, Buzz struggles as far as privacy is concerned. The method that they are employing to create an open and frindly community might not allow for "...her husband emails and chats with an old girlfriend..." kind of behaviour, unless the girlfriend chooses to use an alias. Perhaps google throw the buck of responsibility over content and social etiquette back at the user.
As far as business is concerned, maybe the only reason facebook was so successful was that they dared to be bold with their idea, flawed as some areas seemed, while the likes of myspace were busy trying to promote privacy (in a social forum??? isn't this irony?? My take is, if you want to chat privately, use ebuddy or yahoo and delete your history). Whatever the outcome, one can be certain that google have muscle, and they will not go down without a fight.
In related news, if one were to start a reality TV channel, maybe they should call it "facebook TV". There is drama and people seem to lap it up in bucketfulls! A friend of mine recently asked his girl friend to marry him. He assumed her answer would be yes so he threw a facebook party and everyone joined in on the discussion. When finally she met with him and answered the proposal, the answer was no, probably partly due to her dismay at his "pre-emptiveness". He then threw a hate-riot tantrum on facebook and again, his close friends (and hers too) joined in. That didn't go too well. He didn't need to ask what she felt this time. He found out on, you guessed right, facebook! She replied in kind by changing her status to "Single"!