Blogging Tips

When Google announced Google Buzz earlier this week, it kicked off a heated debate as to how great (or useless) it was. Though some have lauded it and others have outrighted panned it, most of the conversation has been somewhere in between, basically believing it to be a neat product with a lot of potential, but no Twitter or Facebook killer.

But a big driving force behind social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, as well as social news sites, such as Digg and Reddit, has been their widespread adoption by bloggers and other webmasters. Every “Retweet” or “Digg This” button is more than a push for social media love, it is also an advertisement for the services behind them.

Bloggers took to these sites and helped drive their traffic in a way that was mutually-beneficial. But will they take to Google Buzz? TechCrunch seems to think so, having already added a homemade Google Buzz button to their site, as has the social networking blog Mashable.

Most sites, however, have not been so quick to put up their own banners. But it seems reasonable to say that Buzz’s profile on blogs and other sites will be both critical to its success and a strong indication of how far it has come as a service.

Still, bloggers don’t seem to be ready to adopt it yet and, even if they are, it seems unlikely that Google Buzz is ready for them.

Not Another Network!

ShareThis, a tool that lets you add social news/networking services to your site, currently supports nearly fifty different sites. From standards such as Twitter, Facebook and Delicious to relative unknowns like Faves. Currently, the site does not have a Google Buzz button though it does connect with services, like Twitter, that Buzz can pull from.

But with nearly 50 sites to choose from, adding another network is going to be a tough sell. Many people already complain of social networking overload and having a new destination to go to read content will only make that worse. Most people who have use for microblogging, bookmarking, photo sharing, etc. already have places they prefer to go and have little need for a new service that, largely, duplicates those efforts.

But Google Buzz is far from dead in the water. It comes loaded with a very compelling feature set that is ideal for media sharing and has a large built-in userbase in that it in that all existing Gmail users are already Google Buzz users as well. Combine that with its autofollow and recommendation tools and building a network on Buzz is much easier than with most other social networking sites.

So while Google Buzz may not be the most welcome visitor on the Web, it certainly has its foot in the door and it seems to have a decent case for why it should be allowed to stay.

However, even if bloggers want to give Buzz some love on their sites, the service isn’t ready for it. At least not yet.

One-Way Street

The bigger problem with Google Buzz, at least in the short term, is that it is currently a one-way street. Buzz can bring in content from the user’s other sites, but can only display Buzz content in their own interface. This precludes the idea, at the moment, of using third-party clients as with Twitter, at least beyond using the ATOM feed feature to read the content.

The reason is that interacting with Buzz requires either using a connected service or typing directly into the interface due to its relatively weak API. This places a very severe limitation on what users can do with Google Buzz with their own sites.

For example, both the TechCrunch and Mashable “Google Buzz” buttons actually direct the visitor to Google Reader, where the item is then “Buzzed” over their feed that way. However, this requires that users have both a Google Reader and a Google Buzz account setup and that they have activated their Reader with Buzz. It is an ugly an inelegant solution, made worse by the fact one can simply do the same thing from within Google Reader.

However, it probably won’t stay that way for long.

The reason is that Google has made it very clear that it intends to roll out new features to Google Buzz in short order and that it is making a long-term dedication to the service. As such, we could easily see changes to the service that make it more enticing for bloggers and developers alike. That will, in turn likely lead to a greater level of interest in non-early adopter blogs and app developers alike.

It is then we’ll see the real growth in Google Buzz, if it is to happen at all.

Bottom Line

Right now, Google Buzz has a tremendous head start. However, it still lags far behind Twitter and other services. Where I have thousands of people I follow and are following me on Twitter, I have less than 30 in both categories in Buzz right now (much of this due to the fact it is only available on an old, unused Gmail account of mine, not my main Google Apps account) and though Buzz seems to be active for me, it is mostly my friends bringing their Twitter feeds into it, not anything new.

Furthermore, without Facebook integration, either direction, Google Buzz is a walled garden that is incredibly small compared to its biggest competitor. For example, in the middle of last year, Gmail had an estimate 37 million unique visitors per month along with impressive growth. Facebook, however, also had impressive growth and an estimated 122 million monthly visitors.

Though Google Buzz clearly has some of the best odds of any social networking service launched in the past few years, it still has some very large obstacles to overcome and one of the keys is going to be widespread adoption by bloggers.

With that in mind, the question becomes, “Do you plan on integrating your site with Google Buzz any time soon? If so, how?”

That question may, more than anything, determine the fate of Google Buzz.