Google takes the plunge into the Social Media pool

February 11th, 2010 Posted by joshuasinason in Business, Reviews, browsers

For those who can’t get enough of telling people what they are doing, letting everyone know what they like, and sharing funny YouTube clips, there is good news. Google recently announced the launch of Google Buzz, their own social networking program that works with your G-Mail account. Some people are questioning the idea of Google getting into the social media game. Some people are saying that it’s too crowded to support another site. Others say Google isn’t going to bring anything new to the game and the additional ads will turn people off from using their G-Mail site (it happened before when MSN-Hotmail got a little too crazy with imbedded advertising) The question remains: Is this a timely and shrewd move toward Google taking over the internet as we know it? Or a too little-too late idea that will cost them millions and possibly burn people out on social media as we know it?

A couple of facts: 7 million people every hour use Google as a search engine and consumer sites get a little less than 5 million of them. That’s a lot of advertising dollars and money that Google doesn’t see. Ignoring sponsored links, Google doesn’t see a dime of that. If you are a stockholder or an employee wouldn’t you like to see some of that money? GoogleBuzz is just them taking advantage of the fact that they are the number one most visited site in the world and if past internet trends are any indication that title can change quickly (remember Lykos, AOL, or Geocities?)

Is Google afraid of over saturating the market? If they’re reading their history of the internet they are. Thousands of sites have turned people off due to too many ads, pop ups, and attachments. If they do it subtly it could be a huge success. If you have to register your G-Mail, join a Google group, get Google on your I-Phone, and sign up for every application and web service with a G in it just to get at GoogleBuzz then people will be turned off. Twitter reached 10 million subscribers for a lot of reasons, one of which it’s easy to register and doesn’t send you 10 notifications a day. (I’m looking at you Facebook – tread lightly)

Is Google getting in on the tail end of the trend? If other companies spending habits are any indication, then Google is making the right move and the social media trend hasn’t even reached its peak. PepsiCo has so much confidence in social media advertising that they took the money they would have used for a TV spot and put it into social media advertising. It remains to be seen if Pepsi’s tactics will pay off, but the fact that they have more faith in Twitter and Facebook than they do in the biggest media event of all time shows that social media is moving from a bit player most people dismissed as a trend into a legitimate medium that can have a major impact on consumers.

If anyone is going to get the short end of the stick, it’s going to be MySpace. MySpace has been struggling since other websites have taken the ball of consumer generated content and run with it. They’ve had a hard time maintaining relevancy and GoogleBuzz could be the final nail in the coffin that forces them out for good. Even if GoogleBuzz proves to be a passing fad it’ll leave its mark on the social media industry and change the course of its future evolution.

www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/google-buzz

www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Mixed-Buzz-Over-Google-Buzz-2476

www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/theloop/Buzz-over-Google-Buzz

news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100204/us_time/08599195840000