With the launch of Google Buzz, Google is sticking social into the full Google empire, pulling social interaction away from the periphery of social startups.
Instead of going around to different startup companies to get your social fix, Google will sell you that drug in Gmail, no work needed. They will even auto-follow people for you, just to get you hooked.
We have just seen the giant Google step upon the VC-backed social village. What startups are going to take it on the chin? Let’s take a look.
Twitter:
While Google today made huge overtures to the Twitter community, bringing Twitter up at various times, always discussing integration and nice playing. Real story? Google just created their own way to update your status. Twitter will be there for the comfort of its fans, but Google wants you to use Google. This is a serious hit to the future of the Twitter ecosystem.
Consider the number of users that Twitter has compared to the number of users that Google can bring to bear for Buzz from Gmail, Orkut, and the tens of millions with normal Google accounts. Google can grow Buzz from literally nothing to a behemoth overnight. Twitter used to be growing quickly, now it has to just to keep afloat. The need to innovate and reignite growth or be marginalized.
None of that mentions the fact that Buzz has handfuls more features than Twitter does. Simplicity grew Twitter, but can it carry it around the track again?
FriendFeed:
FriendFeed was over the moment that Facebook bought it, but now it is especially dead. With Buzz copying quite a bit of its look and feel, FriendFeed will hemorrhage its last few hundred thousand users and disappear with a whimper into that dark night.
Cliqset:
Cliqset has long been struggling to find traction, recreating itself numerous times trying to find the right product match. With Buzz, the number of people looking for a new social service is going to begin to dry up, hurting their chances of finding an audience for their product. Google just put a dark cloud in their future.
Glue:
Ominous from Google today for the startup Glue was Google’s note that Buzz will learn what you do and do not like, exactly what Glue is out to do. Admittedly, Glue does more than that, but its semantic recommendation engine just got a serious competitor. Who wants to share their soup with Google?
Foursquare:
Much of the demos that Google gave today included mapping capabilities inside of Google that integrated Buzz into normal Maps offerings. Combine that with Google’s constant mentioning of tying Buzz updates to locations, and the Buzz mobile app’s ability to track where you are, and you have a Foursquare killer already made.
Foursquare has far less than one million users putting them at a serious disadvantage to the coming Google Buzz storm.
Gowalla:
Whatever hurts Foursquare will hurt its smaller rival all the more. Gowalla was in hot water to catch up to Foursquare, how will it ever catch Google?
Yelp:
This is speculation, but with Google’s talk around integrating Buzz into locations in Google maps, Google could add in Yelp capability on the double, just by extending how you Buzz at those locations.
Remember when Google almost bought Yelp? I bet that this is why. Google wanted to bake Yelp into Buzz to make it even more killer from day one.
Facebook:
Facebook is the real social success in the last few years. It recently stormed past 400 million active users, and seems to refuse to let its foot off of the gas pedal on growth. Google Buzz competes with parts of Facebook, especially the parts that FriendFeed will merge into, such as your personal news feed, but the two are not direct rivals.
In the question and answer period after the Buzz demonstration, Google was quite demur on Facebook integration. What does that mean? We might not be seeing any. With Google and Facebook keeping apart in two different silos, we are going to see a two part social world in the coming months. Buzz and search, and Facebook and privacy.
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What does all this mean? In a nutshell, Google has decided to build instead of buy, much to the startup world’s chagrin. Google is building a social monster that has fingers in the whole world of Google, something that should make everyone worry to no end as to what can be done with Google sucking up potential and current users as fast as it can.
Add in the companies that you think are headed for choppy waters in the comments.
Nice article. I completely agree and think the feather in Google's cap is that you don't have to go anywhere to use it. It will be there in your browser every time you compose or check your email. With this, you will leverage a few extra thousand users who aren't even technologically inclined.
Yammer via @geoff_ink
I agree and I think it was their goal. Especially with the auto-follow feature and a stuff like that. My dad for example, go check his e-mail dayly but he's never on Facebook. I can't wait to try it out.
All your social media are belong to us. :D
I can has competition not? :P
It's capitalism at its best.
Face it, Google is Evil.
Btw, I think you forgot Hoot Suite.
I just thought of something…
If Buzz relies on your e-mail contacts, which in turn relies on your Address Book, which in turn syncs to your iPhone / Android phone, won't this screw up a lot of people's mobile phone books? Imagine trying to look through hundreds of contacts instead of just dozens.
Another great article.
I wonder if Google is considering partnering with an existing “local search” service in some way – Foursquare checkins + latitude + Buzz might be an interesting combination.
But why pay top dollar when you can build?
I'm willing to bet that Foursquare might not be so pricey right now (for a partnership, not purchase).. but yeah, that's a good point.
Its not clear to me how Buzz will replicate Twitter's broadcast appeal. Sure, on the friend-to-friend stuff I understand how the design works but a lot of Twitter's appeal is discovering like-minded people with interesting things to share. I don't understand from Buzz's publicity how this is built into the service.
True, if they partnered they could get that for free.
And then there is Socialwok that seems this would significantly displace once it comes to Google Apps. It reminds me of Remember the Milk, the task list for Gmail who seemingly was trying to position themselves exclusively for a Google acquisition only to be displaced by Google offering basic task list functionality within Gmail natively. Socialwok appears to be in this same boat; it will be interesting to see how they differentiate themselves.
The play Google will make with respect to Google Apps could get interesting with the new(er) app store marketplace push and Buzz.
Although you mentioned all the current social websites that are out there at the moment I think what you'll find is Twitter has an API that is used by millions of users (directly or indirectly) using it. Seesmic, Tweetdeck, Tweetie to name a few of the popular Apps that use the API. Although it's a convenience to have it all in one spot inside of Gmail I think it'll take a while (if Google decides it's a real competition to Twitter) to get API Developers on board.
I'm not a fan of what Google is doing, they are becoming the MS of the 90's. Just because you have Power, Users and an advantage over many other companies doesn't mean you should go into competition with them. I personally won't be using the Service, since I don't log into gmail anymore anyways.
Definitely – but you can choose which labels to sync on most platforms, although probably not all. I don't know what the heck I'd do if I had to sync all of my contacts now, let alone with Buzz adding people like crazy :-)
To be honest, this has been a long time coming. I was beginning to get quite fed up with lack of integration between the startups. I should be able to check my mails and tweet (or is that buzz?) at the same time. Google has now provided that for us but the real test will be to see if they can get developers on board to make some interesting applications for them. A real nice application would be integration of Buzz with Gmail for mobile. The real kick in the teeth would be if Google spread the word by putting a button that says “Tweet this” on their website! :D