Since last week, Google Buzz has created buzz for almost all the wrong reasons. First a me-too product and then a backlash on privacy. As Google has proved to many of its competitors, a me-too product is a hard sell in the world of free web. An imitation of FaceBook with little incremental value from integration of e-mail was unlikely to work in any case.
Except for the fact that FaceBook does not provide e-mail service, FaceBook is well integrated with almost all major e-mail service providers.
- You can import your contacts from popular e-mail sites. After importing the contacts, I can pick and chose which ones to invite and when.
- If one of the imported contacts joins the social networking site, I get a prompt about the same. I can invite that person and we get connected (LinkedIn feature).
- Discussions forums, new connections, messages from friends, daily network digests are all integrated with e-mail.
Google Buzz started with its good intentions and try to imitate Yahoo E-mail, which has been trying to build a social network gradually by prompting contacts which I can connect to. Needless to say, Yahoo has not succeeded. I attribute the backlash to lack of strong enough positive features in Google Buzz. Had there been features which everyone wanted, had there been a choice in what a customer wants to do, it might have worked.
The bottom-line remains - if the offering is good, customers are willing to accept inconveniences and faults, but that can almost kill a me-too service which no one wants. All of us are, of course, wiser in hindsight.
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