google buzz and some ideas to give it some more sting
the internet is too noisy.
with twitter belching out bazillions of useless, irrelevant tweets. with facebook lifestreams overrun with useless notifications about leveling up in mafiafarm. with thousands of irrelevant search results cluttering my path to action. in some ways, perhaps the internet is more inefficient than ever. less useful than before. that's debatable.
you have to give credit to google buzz for trying to tackle this problem in focusing on how to help you get more relevant information from your social network. when i worked with some great yahoos to anticipate and tackle this issue with yahoo 360 in 2005, we thought that by helping you filter lifestream content, news and people based upon your relationship, we could reduce the clutter. e.g., show me stuff only from my co-workers, or my family, or people who are single and interested in dating, for example. facebook and google buzz have later incorporated these concepts well in different ways.
but the overall problem really isn't solved in any of these implementations, although it's certainly better managed than before. the issue is that you can't easily discern the value of a publisher's content based on your relationship to your publisher. for example, just because you're my best friend, doesn't mean i want my newsfeed cluttered with all your crappy foursquare badge announcements. (btw, i humbly apologize to all my friends who have been subjected to this by me; unfortunately, they've removed me as a friend already and won't see my apology :) ). if i just mute you, or mute the application, i might miss something that is really valuable: e.g., the foursquare news alert that you're in my area, or that you have something really important family news to share.
both fb and goog try to also showcase content based upon how your network is reacting to that content. e.g., it'll show you a post higher up if a bunch of friends have talked about it. but the problem still exists. e.g., i earn a badge that is banal and the news gets autoposted, five "friends" (or people who are mere acquaintances) reply that "foursquare sucks" and suddenly the post is at the top of my list because it appears to be "important".
how do you tackle that problem? well, i have some ideas below, among a bunch of other suggestions that maybe will help google buzz, and yahoo buzz and facebook for that matter... it's always easy to throw these out there when you don't know the rationale or factors a product team is facing, so cut them some slack. :) btw, there is a lot more just general buzz feedback below ... the noise problem is an ongoing one that maybe i'll dedicate another full post in examining.
(also, i'm not going to focus anything on the goog criticism for how it rolled the product out. they were aggressive, they got feedback. they responded quickly. that's what you're supposed to do. that's why we don't work at IBM. kudos for taking a chance.)
buzz organization
1. it's still noisy. if i have a talkative friend, they dominate my feed. if i mute them, i miss good content. what if you let the user help set the priority level? think email. the sender can say whether it's high priority, low priority, confidential, etc. what if a sender could say "announcement" or "trivial" or whatever to help provide context? not 100% effective, but it's another tool. i'm not sure how the "like" feature is used, but i'm hoping if a user earns more "likes" that it is a factor in determining the user's relevance and importance typically in a post.
2. show me most recent. i don't get why this simple sort isn't there. i'm required to view the newsfeed in google by what's determined to be the most important/relevant. if i'm a habitual user, i'm going to want to see the latest posts, not just the ones that goog deems to be important. maybe it's there, and i'm just missing it.
3. the power of groups. i love the ability to publish posts to specific groups, but i'd like to be able to filter my lists by groups, too. eg., show me only posts from coworkers right now.
4. search better not broader. why must Search search all of buzz? e.g., i just want to see posts from my network about google. when i type "American Idol" into buzz search, i get the entire population's results. irrelevant in this case. make it a search option.
buzz content
5. hello, is anybody here? i think this is perhaps the most critical challenge right now. smart move to integrate buzz first into a google front door (e.g., gmail) vs having it launch as a standalone. you need to be somewhere where people spend a lot of time. the problem is, all my 650 friends are spending time on facebook. the 2,000+ people in my google contacts list, (who are the backbone of buzz) are not posting to buzz, and aren't motivated to do so. so my buzz feed is filled with posts from heidi perry. :) (i love heidi, but i know she doesn't want to dominate my feed either). options? some ideas on this problem below:
6. help me find RELEVANT people and content more easily. search profiles better, allow hashtags (or some other tagging model). offer suggestions based upon what i'm talking about or what's in my lifestream already.
7. allow buzz reactions at a wider level of product integrations. i should be able to buzz search results, buzz youtube videos buzz blogger posts, etc. from WITHIN those verticals directly, not from within buzz, which is the current problem (maybe later when more people use buzz the problem will be different). i'm sure the ShareThis people are going to have this integration when the Buzz API is revealed, speaking of...
8. where's the API? ok, it hasn't even been a month, but as a content developer, i want that buzz api so i can make it easy to post my app content to buzz. then again, isn't this where zynga stepped in and ruined all the fun? better make it easier for readers to control their views of what publishers say. maybe give publishers categories of posts to assist them in getting relevant posts into the stream.
buzz design
9. can you put some life into my lifestream? for something that showcases personal content and posts, the product sure feels sterile. taking out the pictures of the commenters really seems to take away the visual punch. instead, i just get a bunch of (yawn) nicely formatted Arial characters. why not let people customize this? highlight in blue whenever people in my "Friends" group comment or post? you don't have to get all myspace on it, but take off the dental hygienist gloves, will ya?
10. increase the volume. the design is clean, but not necessarily efficient. i count 1 - 1.5 google buzz posts top of fold in gmail compared to facebook's 3-5. i loathe scrolling. btw, thanks for collapsing the multiple posts in my feed, but the little drop box denoting this wastes vertical space.
11. you really going to ask me to change my online behavior in order to buzz? i know it's early, but forcing me to go to gmail to buzz and interact forces me to establish it as a front door to my online experience, and frankly, it's not. i use gmail. it's not my home. address this by putting buzz interaction points throughout google and beyond its primary-color walls (can't wait to see it in chrome)
buzz collaboration
12. is there an easier way to collaborate? i read that sergei used buzz to write an op-ed piece. cool that he asked for feedback, and i'm guessing that he went back and edited the post based on that feedback. it still seems a little stilted, especially within the confines of the buzz design, in order to do this. why not let an author give permission to people to edit the post directly? isn't that truly collaboration?
13. async vs sync. these platforms are inherently asynchronous, but only by design. seems that, especially with gtalk integration, it should be made easier for participants to move an async conversation to real-time. perhaps this is already enabled, and it was just hard for me to see it given my network.
14. index everything. ok, easy for me to say this to google, but if i were a startup, and i wanted to juice things, i would make every single fricking post a separate indexable page (think blip.fm for music posts). this is relevant to collaboration because it allows posts to take on a life of their own, even if it's a limited a life. something i can go back to, revise, edit, research and move ahead. i really wish my newsfeed were permanent.
buzz community
15. incent me to participate and reap those rewards. newsfeeds are frequently about social capital exchanges, especially for the publishers and influencers. incent me to participate. use social gaming mechanics. let my profile highlight the fact that i'm vociferous, or that i have a lot of positive feedback from readers, or that i frequently post on "x" categories. all information that i can then re-use to filter my buzz experience to be more relevant.
16. encourage passive users to participate longer or become active. nothing wrong with being a lurker, but often it's only because that person is waiting for the right content to react to. make it easier for a passive user to rate/categorize content (an easy first step to participation), and then perhaps highlight relevant content to react to (e.g., i've indicated an interest in skiing from my interests, whom i follow, etc., so highlight some potentially relevant content based on this that i might want to react to)
17. geolocal. i'm a superfan of LBS, and i really dig the Google Voice, Maps and Buzz integration, but it's in its infancy. i think there's a ton of potential here (just calling it out; not super-interested in ripping it up knowing it has a ways to go).
ok i'm tired of typing, and you're tired of reading. check out buzz if you haven't and if you're interested in this stuff. will be neat to see where they go next with it. i'm always glad to see google advance a product it has built from scratch (instead of bought).
(btw, posterous, it totally drives me nuts that you don't allow a basic photo upload tool from your webpost mechanism. i know you love email, but give people some basic options for the love of pete.)
