For the past couple of days, there has been lots of buzz around Google’s latest attempt at social media. There have been countless reactions to the new product, from glowing praise to raving anger.

Google has dipped it’s toes in social media before, and has in most cases, completely missed the mark. Google Buzz, however, some felt, had/has promise. At the very least, it has been regarded as Google’s best attempt at social media to date. While this may be true, I think Google is being awfully Microsoft-esque about it.

There were numerous headlines on blogs and news sites that made claims similar to “Google Buzz: Twitter and Facebook Killer.” This couldn’t be further from the truth.

There are three major flaws to Google Buzz, right out of the gate:

1. You have to be a Gmail user. Lame. Admittedly, I’m a Gmail user, but – and this is a big but – I do not give it out freely and I certainly don’t want to just so I can use this service. I’m convinced I’m not the only one that feels this way. One of the greatest things about Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn is that they have established their network around the concept of a profile instead of an email address.
2. Google has completely disregarded people’s desire for privacy by making you follow all of your Gmail contacts automatically as soon as you sign up for the service. On top of the fact that you may not want to follow all of these people right out of the gate, Google ruins it even more by displaying the people you follow on your public profile without so much as a mention that they are going to do so. For more on this read this great article by Business Insider: WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw
3. Google is exposing your home address. And you probably didn’t even know it. Sure, when you’re on your iPhone or other smartphone and you’re playing with Google Buzz it asks you if you are okay with letting Google Buzz use your current location; but I don’t think most people realize that Google is going to take that location and turn it into an address. I know I didn’t really think of it that way at first; my initial thought was that it would just be a general proximity, whoops. I looked at all the buzz activity that was near me and discovered that I could stalked by just about anyone who wanted to, if they were so inclined and I decided to actually use Google Buzz. That’s just creepy. No thanks.

Definitely not a Twitter/Facebook killer if you ask me. People already fear Google’s overwhelming ability to invade people’s privacy. With Google Buzz and the unfortunate methods by which Google has released it without being more proactive about protecting people’s privacy, I believe Google has yet again proven that it doesn’t know what the heck it’s doing when it comes to social media. Even Yahoo! got the chance to punch the big kid in the nose, stating on Twitter: “Two years after #Yahoo! launched #Buzz, Google follows suit. Check out the original: http://buzz.yahoo.com/”

This is a situation where Google should learn from it’s “evil-doing” nemesis Microsoft, and listen to Business Insider when they say, “Enough, Google — Just Buy Twitter Already.” Microsoft owns a portion of Facebook - smart, especially considering Facebook is giving even Google a run for it’s money when it comes to daily traffic. If Google really wants to stir up the social media world, they’d invest in a platform that has proven successful already – Twitter.

People Don’t Want or Need Another Social Network

I don’t have the slightest clue how many social networks have been started and/or failed in the last 10 years – and I’m not interested in taking any time to do any research on the matter, either. I do know this, though, of all the networks out there, only three really seem to have been successful enough to find their way into smaller communities like Lubbock.

See, in Lubbock, I am given a front-seat view of which trends will stick around and which will die. I consider the local adoption of new technology a good way to read the pulse of the long-term potential of a new thing. Sure, the Texas Tech students jump on the bandwagon early with a lot of things. But the business owners, working professionals, and the stay-at-home parents are usually very late to the party. Twitter has already passed the peak of media promotion, and yet, there are still numerous people in Lubbock that don’t even know how it works or what it’s all about. They’ve heard of it. They’re learning about it, and they are joining the party, but we are well past the curve compared to bigger metropolitan areas. The same goes for LinkedIn. Facebook caught on quite early though.

When I talk to my clients about social media, I can mention companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (and in that order) and generally get at least an acknowledgement of having heard the names. If I mention Google Buzz, I suspect I won’t find anyone that has even heard of it for at least the next 3 months (unless they are friend or in the industry). To me, that is the measure of a social media success – how fast the normally late-adopters join the party.

People are already worn out by the existing social networks. Google has arrived late to the party, and not in the “guy that shows up just in time to get ready for the after-party” kind of way either. Google has arrived when all the cool kids have already left for the after-party and now they look like a big dork.

Overall, my prediction for Google Buzz: yet another Google social media fail. Unless, of course, they make some drastic changes and/or I’ve completely missed something. What are your thoughts? Have you messed with Google Buzz yet? Do you think it will kill Twitter/Facebook?

An interesting thing happened this morning. After sleeping in past 7:30 (part of my Saturday traditions), I proceeded to get up and mosey into the living room where Lynne and Caden were already up watching TV. After sitting quietly watching Caden flip through the full cycle of channels without finding anything that he seemed to find worthy of watching, he asked if we wanted to watch a movie on Netflix (we have a home theater PC setup that makes watching Netflix streaming movies a breeze).

After flipping the TV input to VGA to receive the signal from the monitor output on the PC, I took a moment to observe how Caden (currently 9 years old) navigated his way to Netflix. I have him trained to use Firefox (developers rejoice), so he clicked the icon on the Windows quick launch bar to open the browser. On this machine, we left the default Firefox home page alone so the window presents a screen that looks like so:

This is where things got interesting. Instead of using the large Google search box in the middle of the screen (where the cursor is set by default when the page loads), Caden moved the mouse to select the small Google search box in the top right corner of the window. More interesting still were Caden’s steps after typing ‘netflix’ into the box and hitting enter. When presented with the Google search results, he selected the absolute first link he saw that he knew would take him to his destination. This happened to be a sponsored link for Netflix, not the organic search results found below it. For the visually inclined, he clicked here:

How children are being conditioned to use the Internet

It became clear at that moment that one of the things I have not paid much attention to is how our children are being taught to use the Internet, and more specifically, how to use search engines to find what they are looking for. Lynne and I proposed the notion that he had been conditioned to use the small box in the top right, thereby causing him to completely ignore the big search box on the middle of the screen.

On top of that, it became clear that even though he undoubtedly knows that Netflix is found easily by simply typing netflix.com into the browser’s address bar, he chose to go the “long way” by performing a search, which provides further evidence of some pre-existing conditioning.

The blind leading the blind

It dawned on me that he most likely had not been educated and therefore conditioned to the concept of going directly to his destination. Even more importantly for businesses, though, was his quick-clicking action on the sponsored link. At 9 years old, he doesn’t care that it’s a sponsored link, he just wanted to get to Netflix.

Granted, as he grows older and more educated in the ways of the Internet he may be less-inclined to click on sponsored links, but the lesson remains. The businesses that have opted to not promote themselves via Google and other major search engine sponsored links (at a minimum for those people that are searching specifically for their company) are most likely missing large opportunities every day.

As our children grow into this Internet and information age, it seems easy to forget about how they are taught to navigate these waters. Where we need to be careful is in realizing that many teachers may not have the knowledge of how to navigate the Internet themselves that our children need to be taught by. [As an aside: I have huge respect and appreciation for teachers, and in no way mean to belittle them in my previous comment] In many ways, those that are in teaching positions are still learning how to harness the power of the Internet themselves.

What to do

As businesses increasingly build relationships with customers via online tools (not just their website, but also social media, etc) they need to be especially focused on how the upcoming generations will look for and find them online. They are not buyers yet, but they influence the largest buying group (women) dramatically – don’t think they don’t. And in the near future, they will be buyers, and if they aren’t able to find you, they will not have the loyalty of your older demographic customers. Kids and teens are far more inclined to move on in an instant if they are unable to find what they are looking for – which means they move on past your business if you’re not prepared.