Social media is a quickly growing phenomenon that has became a highly populated area in a very short space of time. There have been a lot of talks around the subject of social media and the effects it is having on us today. Social media is being used by millions of different people around the world daily for different purposes. Some use it socially with friends and contacts, others, who are involved with business, are using the facility as a high powered marketing strategy.
So What’s the Buzz?
Google has finally launched its new social product, Buzz, at an event held at its Mountain View, CA headquarters. Google Buzz is an easy way to start either socialising with friends, or, from a business point of view, can act as a highly effective aspect of marketing strategy.
Buzz is being heavily compared with other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Similar to these sites, you are given the option to view and share photos, videos and make comments, keeping in close contact with friends and associates. However, Buzz has taken a different look at the way their social site works. It will link your Gmail and Buzz accounts, providing any updates or other notifications directly as an email.
Throughout the launch of Buzz, Google have set a lot of time aside working around real time search. Real time search is a highly talked about area which is going to give Buzz a difference from a social media prospective. As soon as you have typed your thoughts, the information is published almost instantly. Buzz also provides an importing system which delivers feeds from other social sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Google reader and Twitter so you can still keep updated with contacts using these services. Photos and information from any of these sites will be shown as a thumbnail within your Buzz account. There will be no need to keep refreshing as this will happen automatically. The important role of real time search within Google Buzz gives it the added benefit of aiding search engine optimisation. Google Buzz can really be an asset to business, for example the immediate indexing of pages would be a huge advantage to press conferences.
Google Buzz has caught the attention of a lot of people worldwide and looks likely to be a potential threat on some of the largest social network foundations. Here are some other notable aspects:
Automated Contacts List – Friends who you regularly contact from your Gmail account will automatically be shown on your Buzz account. Slightly different to other networking sites such as Facebook, you will now be given the option to share information with ‘friends of friends’. This will happen by information being streamed on an account, even if the user is not a required friend on your list.
Privacy – Buzz has concerned some to how private it actually is. With Buzz, you are given the option of sharing photos, updates and other information publicly or privately. By selecting a private use, information will only be viewable by your friends and family. However, public information and updates will be viewable on other Google user profile accounts and eventually also by searches within a search engine. For this reason, personal information should always be hidden.
Google have launched Buzz to compete with the largest social sites being viewed today. Only time will tell to see if this happens but as it’s taken some of the best aspects from each social networking site, as well adding its own additional benefits, Google Buzz could prove to be the future of social networking.
