Not that long ago I lamented this death of Google Wave and asked if Google Buzz would be next. I questioned how many ‘average’ people used Buzz and if it could catch on eventually.
Tonight I saw a post from Leo Laporte, master of the Twit network and one of the most connected internet users in the world, and got my answer:
Buzz is dead.
On his personal blog site, Leoville.com, Leo tells of how Buzz and all social media has been a waste of his time and how no one even noticed that through some error 16 days of posts from him to Buzz didn’t go through— and no one noticed. Read his post, it’s simple and to the point from someone who knows what he’s talking about because he’s used it all.
Let this be said here too: this is the death knell of Buzz.
When someone like Leo Laporte has this happen: someone who is so insanely connected to the internet and who’s fan-base is 99% exclusively made up up people who probably know the latest tech, the latest tools and the latest communication mediums it means that this service is dead.
To Leo, all social media is dead to him and he’s realized he’s ignored his blog for it and he swears that time is over. How many people can you really “follow” and actually notice what the majority of them are saying? As Leo says it “I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves.” That’s one of the key problems of the assorted “social media” platforms… but Buzz has more to blame for its demise then that. It’s a Google technology.
Buzz is dead to Leo and I think it will be the next poorly executed, or at least very poorly explained, technology from Google to die.
What is going on with Google? Buzz and Wave are fantastic technologies but no one seems to be using them… not even the people who are prime first adopters of technology.
Why can’t Google gain the ability to explain and make these tools compelling ? They’ve got more money then god, hire a bunch of people and straighten this problem out.
Stop making back room deals with Verizon and start getting things straight inside your own house.
Everyone knows Google is working on a “social media” project. Some sort of competitor for Facebook. How the hell do you hope to sell that to the general Facebook loving masses around the world? Google doesn’t seem to be able to explain new and innovative things to the common person.
Will the social media thing from Google (“Google Me”) be fantastic? You bet your ass it will be. I’ll bet you money right now that elements of Wave and Buzz will be front and center in it and it will be done in a way that will blow the doors off Facebook… but will anyone use it? Will Google be able to explain it to Mom and Pop Citizen in Podunk, Idaho?
Look at the job they did with Wave and Buzz and you tell me.
Yeah, exactly.
His name is Laporte not Leporte. And I hate Twitter too! Micro-Blogging is an immense waste of time. Seems that a lot of people have a lot of time to waste…
Thanks. Got it right in the post but screwed it up in the subtitle.
It’s easy, it’s fast and involves no commitment to taking the time to write something bigger then a few lines. I see the appeal but as I said, who can read let alone pay attention to 3000 twitter streams at the same time? I use TweetDeck to segregate a lot of the people I follow on twitter but in all honesty I miss most of it unless I go looking for a specific person’s tweets.
this post is gay
LOL!!! I had to approve this comment simply so other people could see it—- LOL!!!
Yeah, that’s insightful and interesting and really makes me think.
LOL!!
SANS seem to think Google have already “let Buzz die” in their NewsBites email published on 7th Sept 2010 when talking about the recent lawsuit, I think they may have been thinking of Wave but it looks like Buzz will follow. I’m a big Gmail user and Google Reader user but I have Facebook which I have invested a lot of time in uploading photos (via Picasa as it happens) and building up a comprehensive list of Friends, I have no desire to transfer my Social networking to Google, however if they could come up with a way to tie my two accounts closer together I would be interested, such as have gmail handle all my facebook messaging and integrate my contacts, now that would be cool.