LetsBuyIt Blog

As you know I am user of both Facebook and Twitter and so I have been very interested in the announcement of the new social networking feature from Google: Google Buzz. It is in the early trial stages at the moment with about 1% of Gmail users testing it. I have being weighing up the potential advantages and disadvantages of Google Buzz to see if this will be a new way I can communicate the LetsBuyIt news with you, or whether it will be swallowed up by the dominant Facebook and Twitter.

Firstly a little bit about how Google Buzz functions…

• Google Buzz works in conjunction with your already established Gmail and is a new feature to share your status updates, photos and videos with others.
• It is slightly less time consuming to set up as it automatically follows people you chat and email to the most frequently.
• It also gives you the option to post your updates privately or publicly, so if you do not want the world to see what you are up to you can choose a select group of people to inform.
• You can also share content from other sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Picassa.
• It will recommend content from people that it thinks you may like to see and incorporate it into your newsfeed.
• Status added from mobile phones will record the location of the sender on the message, you can see what other people are saying around you.

Here is a video introduction to tell you more:

I have looked at some pros and cons of the new Google Buzz to try and compare.

Pros

• One major plus is that it is integrated with Gmail so it already can capitalize on regular Gmail uses (about 176 million)
• It can also use Gmail to access your most frequently talked to friends so you don’t have to add them manually.
• You can post public or private status updates.
• Twitter is already linked to it.
• Public updates will also be added to Google Places, a directory of businesses that include reviews of restaurants and theatres, for example.
• It is still in the early stages and can be developed- things can be changed!
• Google executives said that Buzz would help tackle the problem of information overload, as Google would apply its algorithms to help people find the information most relevant to them

Cons

• Why would people want to use Google Buzz when they already have Twitter and Facebook?
• Gmail is usually used for personal mail, but people often use their personal e-mail to communicate with co-workers and may not want to share their statuses with them, could get some people into trouble!
• Google already tried the social networking thing with”Orkut” which failed under the popularity of Facebook.
• Does not offer any integration with facebook as it does with Twitter.
• There does not seem to be any character limit with Google Buzz which could make things a bit cluttered after a while.
• Facebook has 400 million users compared to 175 million of Gmail, it does not seem like Google Buzz will be able to overtake this giant!

Is Google just trying to keep up with everyone else and trying to wheedle their way into the social networking market with this offering? And will they be able to match or even come close to the success that Facebook has mananged to achieve? Is there even space in the market for Google Buzz or will people just continue using Facebook?

Let me know your views.

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On November 17th Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm will finally be available on your Xbox 360 console. Of course in order to access these sites you will need to subscribe to Xbox LIVE Gold, which costs about £40 for a year’s subscription.

These new features will allow users to update and change their Facebook status and invite friends to play over Xbox Live, send tweets and listen to their favourite songs directly from their console.

Source: mediastar.de

There are currently over 10 million Xbox 360 owners across Europe and considering the wide popularity of Facebook and Twitter many people should be satisfied with this new feature !

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In case you were wondering about whether we will be present at the E-Commerce Convention 2008 in Paris this year, we are glad to announce that Billy, our Ant, will take us along. Many of you will be able to see Billy very quickly because he is presenting himself in his best manner and at the same time it is difficult to oversee him

Don’t hesitate to talk to Billy or our team and ask about our new Letsbuyit, the new innovative way of shopping! You can also find out what Billy is doing by following his twitter and check out his facebook profile (Billy Letsbuyit) or our posterous!!!

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Bad news for Facebook… The famous social network platform seems to face a gaping hole which could allow hakers to break into your FaceBook account. In other words, that gap could enable attackers to change your privacy settings, add or delete some of your Facebook friends or even read and send messages from your account. The problem has been reported to Facebook by a German developer, Artur Wachelka, and Facebook’s Managers are still working on it.

Watch out until the problem has been resolved !

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This is a funny video that shows what Facebook would be like in real life:

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We had previously reported about the Opensocial Initiative and that MySpace would like to open up an API for outside developers to develop applications for MySpace, similar to the applications of Facebook. Well, they are online now and some applications are already available. MySpace also provides the opportunity to create social shopping widgets! Check out the MySpace application center here.

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We have previously written about API and it’s one of the keywords of development in the last few months. When popular API are provided for the third-party innovators, there is a huge demand, as we can see with GoogleMaps and the over 4000 applications on Facebook itself.

With the growing availability of API it became more difficult to understand them all and that is why Google decided to simplify the development for websites and developers by creating one development platform called: OpenSocial.

This is how Google explains it on their website: “The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host 3rd party social applications. Because it is based on the famous standard of HTML and Javascript it is easy to be learnt and quick to be applied. “

The following websites implementing the OpenSocial Standard are some websites which imply to revolutionize the development industry inevitably:

MySpace, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, und XING to name just a few of all participants.

If Facebook does not join this initiative we are bound to see an interesting competition.

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After reading RSS-news nowadays my tag-cloud-looking mind, trained to memorize only important facts (My studying attitude– if I don’t remember something it was not important, which even worked somehow…) looks a little bit like this:

Bubble 2.0, 1998, expectations, overvalued, undervalued, Facebook value $10billion maybe even $100billion (expected 2007 sales $150 million), TechCrunch worth $100 million, RockYou value $500 million, Ebay write off 1.4 billion Skype, Microsoft $6 billion acquisition aQuantive, et cetera.

You can most definitely sympathize and we discussed this topic here for about 1min and we came up with the following scientific conclusion: “I don’t know, let the analysts do these interpretations. Let’s get back to work!”

1. These numbers are so big that nobody can actually relate to them or imagine them anyway. Just let the analysts talk about the money that others make! That’s their job!

2. Each mentioned company is based on a brilliant idea, brilliant team to realize them and luck. However each project is also based on bloody, hard work. So just work!

3. Get the basics right because now there are laws, rules and regulations that go with a website and e-commerce company!

4. Think before you click to send an email.

5. Facebook is great fun, an incredible market intelligence machine but an even greater waste of time during the day.

6. Going offline to work sometimes is very productive.

Good luck with all your projects because good ideas deserve success! Just dare to express and realize them.

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Nearly a quarter of upstream clicks to the top 19 social sites originated from one place on the Web, according to a report from Hitwise.

Social networking sites are feeding off each other’s good will, according to a new report by competitive intelligence service company Hitwise.

Facebook’s traffic has doubled in just over 18 months, but MySpace still receives most of the Web’s social networking traffic. MySpace captured 79.7% of social networking traffic in April, according to figures released by Hitwise on Monday. Facebook accounted for 11.47% of social networking visits, while MySpace alterative Bebo drew 1.28% of the traffic last month, according to the Hitwise report.

MySpace visits rose 70% from April 2006 to April 2007, while the percentage increase for the lesser-used sites was much more dramatic, according to Hitwise. Facebook visits increased 126% from April 2006 and Bebo’s traffic rose 184% from last year, Hitwise announced.

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