You Can’t See The Ocean For The Bathtub… For Now, It’s Still Niche
I have been sneakily using Google Buzz for the past few days and comparing it with FriendFeed. Google Buzz is promising and… well… let’s face it… another niche product.
We sit her and debate endlessly about open standards and content aggregation but, really… will anyone outside the addicts use it?
I look at my own use. These are the site I use on a regular basis:
- Flickr
- YouTube
- My blog
I aggregate this through FriendFeed and consume other’s streams in this environment. I see the same use case for Google Buzz, if on a larger scale.
The issue is my wife, who is a casual user, uses the same things… except they are all Facebook. Photos, videos, status messages, communication and writing long winded posts.
This is true for a lot of her friends, my parents and a lot of my work colleagues who aren’t knee deep in social media. They have a presence on 1 or 2 sites, certainly not enough that requires central aggregation.
So is Google Buzz a great thing for a small section of people? For the time being, I say it is. It may be the greatest technological advancement in human communication and content discovery, but we have to be mindful that we aren’t so far ahead we can’t still hear the voices of the masses.
Bathtub in the ocean…
J
