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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With the introduction of Yammer we are getting a serious company now! This enterprise version of twitter has won the price as best start-up entry at the Techcrunch50 2008 competition (which took place from the 8th until the 10th of September in San Francisco).

Yammer is just like twitter however a corporate version for only colleagues and log-in, which makes it much easier to communicate with your colleagues and see what they are up to. Makes the team work more efficient! You will always be up to date what you are colleagues are working on, how everybody is progressing, when the next meeting will take place, etc.! This small intranet works well however the question is whether the users will animate it, like always!

As long as your colleagues are not trying to spam, control or bully you it is all good and a really good team-work tool!

This TechCrunch-certified tool gets our thumbs up and the account is set up.

First judgement: only useful when you are colleagues are using it (along with skype, msn, twitter, gmail chat, icq, etc.

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I am sure that all of you have been received more spam in your gmail or webmail account in the last few days than before, which is not really common for Google. Today I read on the GoogleWatchBlog that apparently the Google Captcha was cracked and therefore the Spam-Bots are starting to spam Gmail now. Very annoying!

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The new wave of self-improvement efforts of retailers to adapt their websites and its navigation to the needs of the users, by implementing the latest technologies, is breezing refreshingly through the retail scene.

The fascinating tracking technologies, such as Google Analytics, allow retailers to improve the usability of their websites by closely investigating how viewers navigate on the websites and where there is need for improvement such as responsiveness to advertisements, colors, schemes and cursor-movement patterns. There is a great need for this improvement and we are looking for the new ergonomics 2008.

A new focus in retail has been put on the product itself as consumers become more critical of product, quality, price and presentation with the help of internet transparency. The efforts will be concentrated on finding new mediums to provide the best information to persuade the viewers to trigger a purchasing action.

The shocking research findings of the American Usability expert Jakob Nielsen that modern internet surfers are completely blind to banner ads on websites, by having studied eye-movements, is evidence that retailers need to move on. All proactive Marketers are looking for the new thing.

Mediums 2.0 are new marketing must-have-tools for every frontliner. Video is probably the new buzz of internet marketing 2007 as you can see in the Tomorrow Focus and Doubleclick video-effect experiment “takeGAS” and on IKEA Germany now. IKEA has created an entire videoshow presenting all 1,154 products of the new catalogue, which is a truly fascinating movie. One things is for sure: All this multimedia selling-tools will push forward those high-speed servers from Berlin Hosting Company 1blu without a doubt.

Another great hype is viral marketing with online animations, such as the genius new Wilkinson Teaser “Fight For Kisses”, the BMW M3 game or even for company presentations on www.floaded.com (check out Mercedes Benz). There are many more examples out there, even the GMAIL Video campaign, etc. That viral marketing is very difficult is proven by the Jupiter Research stating that mere 15% of the campaigns succeed as the TigerBalm Youtube video campaign shows.

May the creative and intelligent ones win!

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