Google Buzz is a new service that lets people share thoughts, pictures, videos, and other content using their Google email address. It’s had an incredible start with over 9 million posts in the first 3 days of launch.
Why is it so popular? It’s integrated directly into Gmail, which means tens of millions of users now have access to features that mimic Twitter and Facebook, even if they have never joined a social network before.
What is it? Think of it as a way to post your thoughts (like Tweets) on your Google Buzz ‘wall’ along with updates from friends and other contacts (in the style of Facebook). In addition, Buzz lets you combine other services into your ‘buzzstream’ as well, like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Google Reader, which helps to reduce the ever-increasing number of information sources you struggle to pay attention to.
For small businesses that rely heavily on customer referrals and word of mouth marketing, Google Buzz can act as a megaphone for customer conversations by publishing them to the inbox of millions of Gmail users. If consumers mention a product or service, their comments can spread virally through their social connections without the need for services like Twitter or Facebook.
In addition, these results aren’t limited to users of Gmail. Google search results will include content that people post on Buzz. If you search for ‘Vancouver 2010‘, you’ll find Buzz comments in the ‘latest results’ section:
The bottom line: Google Buzz is a powerful new social media channel that offers a simple way for consumers to voice their opinions about products and services they use. For small businesses, it’s an opportunity to listen to what customers are saying and to drive awareness and enthusiasm for their brands by participating in the conversation.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out Google’s two minute YouTube video for Buzz.
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Give me a break. Google Buzz is good for people using Gmail. That’s it. The world does not run on Gmail. Hotmail is more popular than Gmail.
Anyone who tells you that Google Buzz is somehow important for your business will undoubtedly drive it into the ground.
The Bottom Line: Gmail is about as good for business as Google Chat.
Chat (Instant Messaging) and Buzz have very different use cases. To say that Buzz isn’t relevant for business is basically saying Twitter isn’t useful for business, and that’s been proven untrue by many companies.
If I mention the terrible hamburger I just ate on Google Buzz, when someone searches Google for that business, my comment is going to show up. That’s something that every business should be aware of.
Buzz is not Email. So comparing it to Hotmail is a bit of a red herring.
(Never mind that GMail will likely overtake HotMail in not-so-distant future.)
That said, I think the jury is still out on Buzz’s importance to small businesses. In one respect, it’s just another proprietary social network (just like Twitter and Facebook)… with nowhere near the audience those other networks have. So it’s still very much a minor player. For a small business, their time is probably much better spent trying to engage those other larger communities first, before worrying about the more modest Buzz audience.
Buzz’s ability to act as an aggregator seems pretty cool at first, since it allows you to search not just Buzz, but also any other networks that GMail users have decided to make public. So for a small business like, oh, the North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS), being able to see what people are saying could be useful.
But the problem is that those searches are misleading. They don’t show what everyone is saying about NAHBS everywhere – they only show what Buzz users are saying. If I do that same search on Twitter directly, for example, I get a LOT more hits, that provide a much more real-time gestalt.
So I’m left wondering where the real value in Buzz is still…