The Google Buzz Impact on Social E-Mail
Google Buzz is apparently here to stay.
With 9 million users in the first two days it is a matter of time that it will swamp others with its footfalls. For many years Google has been serving as a highway in the communication business but not as a destination in social media networks.
When Google started monetizing its search engine business and later Gmail, they created a set of advertising tools, namely Ad Sense, Ad Words and the Google APIs that showed you how to optimize a website for revenue generation. Some innovative entrepreneurs, including LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook, used these tools (and many others) and started building ad linked independent destinations online.
However social media needed a touch of class. A special place for the creators of art or literature, a place for the glib communicators, who could grab media focus by a tweet. So in came the "media platforms." With just 140 characters, Twitter ensured that only powerful communicators had a place in this exclusive world. Despite this exclusivity, Twitter created history with its 10 billionth tweet recently. Other networks to display skills, art etc. also increased in popularity like SlideShare, Scribd, Vimeo, Metcafe, Yahoo groups as well as Google’s own Youtube, all specialized media platforms earning billions in ad revenue.
Facebook is reportedly sending more newsfeeds than Google to the Broadcast media, though Google's sway is complete in the print media. Last year Facebook mobile application users grew by 112% and Twitter grew by 347%, which shows that if consumer moves from the desktop to mobile, Google may simply loose out top billings unless it creates its own destination centers of social networking or the ultimate media platform. Phone companies like Docomo have set up their own social networks like buddy.net and the challenge to Google's ad revenues is iminent, a mobile segment that could add a digit extra to the PC user segment.
With Buzz, Google entered new turf. Now GMail boasts Google search and Google buzz as features, while Twitter and Facebook can become gadgets inside GMail. With many more gadgets in beta phase, soon GMail or Yahoo Mail will look as a complete web world itself with mail, search, social media and media platforms all inside.
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