Google Buzz
Jason Calacanis posted an interesting series of questions, I replied on buzz, but thought I may as well post them here too.
1. Have you used Google Buzz?
Yes :)
2. How is Google Buzz better than Facebook?
Better conversations, better interaction model, not another place to look. Better location-awareness. Open to other systems. (facebook’s import always seems intentionally handicapped). My flickr and google reader import usually goes about a week and a half between updates. Delicious never updated at all.
3. What advantages does Google Buzz have over Facebook?
For gmail users it has a installed user base, and social graph in place, the openness again is important, people use more than one service. I assume google will iterate more than facebook in meaningful ways (i.e. not just monthly redesigns).
4. What advantages does Facebook have over Google?
User base, more functionality. Novice users won’t use the best of breed apps (like flickr) and import b/c that is too hard, so they use facebook’s versions of things. Also, stupid games. Facebook could become the AOL of the web, closed, slowly fading. Twitter on the other hand might have a catastrophic rapid problem.
5. Did you see this coming?
Not really. It’s not super surprising though, but their implementation is better than I think most people would have expected.
6. What do you attribute Google’s recent string of AMAZING products including: Chrome, Android, Nexus One and Buzz?
I think their innovation model (not worrying about how buzz impacts wave, latitude etc) is good, and unique in big companies. I think the temporal relationship is probably just random though. I think this is an underlying effect of their organizational structure, not something planned, or temporary.