"If you think Scripture is telling you what you want to hear, take a long, hard second look."
- The Ancient Mariner
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Since Google is using its new Buzz social network in an attempt to take down Facebook, the #1 social network should return the favor: Facebook should tell Google to buzz-off. Permanently.So what do you think? Agree or disagree?
To protect itself from Google, Facebook content must never appear in any form as part of any Google product. Not ever, and Facebook should make the announcement today.
Here's why: If Google Buzz is ever connected to Facebook, it will be the beginning of the end for today's #1 social network.
As a Facebook user, the last thing I need in my life is another social networking service. I have lots of friends--business and personal--on Facebook. It plays an important role in my home and work life. What I don't need is for my friends to start dividing themselves into Facebook users and Buzz users.
I want all my friends on just one service.
Just as Google, Amazon, and eBay have become dominant in their markets, almost to the exclusion of all competitors, Facebook has become America's social network. We do not need another one and Google will someday regret trying.
Google is simply too late to the game and given its failed history in social networks--Orkut, anyone?--there is little reason to predict success beyond the power of Google's name.
For Buzz to succeed, it needs Facebook content. By denying it, Facebook can help secure its future and help wall off Google.
Given Google's modus operandi, Buzz will manage to somehow strip revenue from any social network that it allows it to connect. Eventually there will be just Google. Don't believe me? Sit back and watch.
Facebook must act now to stop this. It should never allow Buzz to aggregate Facebook content or send updates to Facebook users. If Facebook does this today, nobody will notice and not much of a stink will be raised.
There is no demand, at the moment, from Buzz users to connect to Facebook. Over time, however, demand will develop if Facebook doesn't take steps now to prevent it.
Facebook does not need Gmail as a client to attract and support users. And I don't need an e-mail service to divide my friends into Gmail users and everyone else.
So, if you are looking for me, I'll make it easy: I'll be on Facebook and not on Google Buzz. You'll thank me for not complicating your life.
Oh, by the way, here's some irony for you...I saw this article on my igoogle homepage.
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Comments on "What Will Happen To Our Precious Facebook?":
2. Shrode
- 02/11/2010 12:50 pm CST
Jared,
did you know that you can put people in categories? Then you can just display the newsfeed of the people that edify and amuse.
You can also go to edit at the bottom and hide particular updates from specific people.
As far as it becoming for moms... you're probably right. But what's wrong with moms? 
(Just try to weasle out of that question, sucka.)
4. brandontmilan
- 02/11/2010 2:57 pm CST
the more that I look at the settings and formats of Google Buzz, the more i'm thinking that it is exactly what I wish that Facebook and/or Twitter were...
6. Bird
- 02/11/2010 3:44 pm CST
On a side note, I don't understand why everyone in the world doesn't convert to Gmail. It is, by far, the best email service out there. It blows away Hotmail and Yahoo, and I even use it for work (linked to my work account, so none of our customers are the wiser); furthermore, the search function is light years better than the anemic search function on Thunderbird.
7. Bill
- 02/11/2010 4:17 pm CST
I'm not comfortable assimilating into the Google borg just yet.
I still use Thunderbird.
9. G. Frederick
- 02/12/2010 10:58 pm CST
Well Jared, you may not have read mom-blogs, but it was a mom-blog that led me here (blestwithsons. I am, probably unfortunately, a facebook fanatic (though I don't have anything to do with the "games" on there. I also LOVE Gmail and have tentatively looked into Buzz. Right now it doesn't do anything for me as all my friends are facebookers and I also have Twitter feeds come to me through Echofon So I really don't need an aggregator like Buzz.
10. III
- 02/14/2010 8:32 pm CST
I don't have any comment on Buzz as I have yet to try it out, but as far as the supposed superiority of Gmail, I have to disagree. The interface for GMail is just awful: you can't multitask, attaching large files doesn't ever seem to work (despite the advertised "unlimited attaching"), and it always seems a tad bit slow. Yahoo's interface is much more user-friendly, despite the ads.
The one thing I will give Google is that they offer free POP/IMAP and forwarding, something that yahoo doesn't do. Which is why I compromised, and use my gmail account as my primary email, but used through the yahoo interface.
11. Quaid
- 02/15/2010 8:10 am CST
I saw an article that showed privacy concerns with Google's Buzz (Privacy concerns? Google? In the same sentence? No- couldn't be. Oh- wait, their whole business is one big privacy concern)
I read the article and went online to de-follow and block any current followers from my Buzz just in case my privacy is being violated. Don't want anyone looking in through my online bedroom window. (For the record, that was figurative language.)
I'm with Jared on Facebook - I end up there app. once every two weeks, or so. It's good for that time, but then I move on. I would Twitter, but I don't own a device that would let me update the account in real time, so I don't bother with it.
I do use Gmail and like it, but I use it through Entourage (software with its own set of issues) - so I never am working with Gmail's web-based GUI. (It is nice, though, when I do have to access email online)
12. Bird
- 02/15/2010 8:18 am CST
you can't multitask
What exactly do you mean by that?
attaching large files doesn't ever seem to work
I've never had that problem.
always seems a tad bit slow
I wonder, based on what you're saying, if the problem is either your computer or your Internet connection. In my experience Gmail is generally snappy. It's at least as fast as the other web-based services, and I've used just about all of them.
The main reason I'm not high on Yahoo or Hotmail is the ads. Gmail simply supplies a cleaner interface.
Plus, I love all of the labs features in gmail and the ways that the Gmail team is constantly improving the program (for example, the "undo" option which allows you to undo a sent email within 10 seconds of it being sent).
Leave a Comment:
I'm kinda ambivalent. I find less and less interest in Facebook every day. My favorite part is really the status updates, and I get that on Twitter now. The bonus is that my Twitter feed updates regularly both edify and amuse me. That happens on Facebook occasionally but I have to slog through people's game updates, political rants, whining about imagined stresses, etc. I think Facebook is becoming for moms. :-)