Jeff Bullas had a post up on his blog, Is Twitter About to Terminate Google Buzz, that discussed how Google Buzz is essentially dead.
However, I don’t think Twitter killed Google Buzz. I think Google Buzz killed Google Buzz. I had high hopes for it. I really did. I didn’t see it as a Twitter killer or substitution for Twitter, but rather a more social version of the Google Reader Share with Note feature. I thought it might be a nice way to write a few lines about a blog post or news item you stumbled across. And with more blogs disabling comments, I thought it had potential to usher in a new era of blog commenting.
It didn’t. And I blame Google Buzz for crushing my Google Buzz dreams. First, there was the privacy issue, which, even though they sort of fixed it, shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Second, there was no good way to filter Google Buzz. It was in your inbox and it was on or off. There was no real in-between setting to choose from.
Perhaps if Google opened up the API earlier, we could have seen some nifty clients like we did with Twitter. Or maybe apps like HootSuite and TweetDeck would have added in Google Buzz and we could have had some better filtration and monitoring methods. But Google didn’t.
This comes after Google’s last disaster, Google Wave, which is being shut down.
So, I give up on Google creating a decide social networking product, BUT, I don’t give up on Google. I just wish they would channel their energy elsewhere.
Please Google, take Buzz off life support. It’s really just getting sad at this point. Channel that energy into doing something we need you to do-like make it so when we try to download a Google Doc as a Microsoft Word document the formatting doesn’t get all screwed up. If Zoho can do it, so can you! Or work on improving Gmail Offline so I don’t have to worry about Gmail not being able to play nicely with the current desktop email clients on the market.
You tried something different and everyone’s proud of you for that. Social just isn’t your thing. It’s ok. We’ll forgive you. So long as you go back to doing what you do best and being awesome at nearly everything else.
ummm. no it’s not dead, actually it’s been more active than ever with new people joining in everyday. I actually use it more than twitter, rather i just dump my buzzes into twitter.
oh and btw seesmic and tweetdeck have supported buzz for a long time now, obviously you didn’t actually try them out before posting
Yes, Seesmic and Tweetdeck have supported buzz, but unfortunately haven’t allowed a filtering system in the same way they do for Twitter and Facebook.
I’m glad you’re making good use of Google Buzz. I really had high hopes for it.
I used Buzz initially but have mostly abandoned it now. Twitter is way superior. I just don’t have a need for it.
Yeah buzz never really took off. Time to do away with it.
I still use Buzz. It allows lengthier commentary than Twitter, as well as the posting of articles, photos, videos, etc. Maybe you can do all that with Twitter (I don’t use it so I don’t know). I think a lot of the problem isn’t the app itself, but with people getting locked in to certain social networking apps, making it difficult to switch.
Yet another Google product shat out without really considering if it’s useful or wanted. I’m sure they only make this garbage to keep their engineers from being bored
I like Buzz. I get sick of the fail whale on Twitter. I’m a Google fan though. I’m hoping the big growth with Android devices somehow helps push Buzz a bit more. I always duplicate what I say on both anyways.