Is Buzz Buzzing Again? Google’s Efforts at Social Media

Google clearly dominates the search world; its efforts to venture into social media have not been as successful as their foray into the smartphone industry, as evidenced by Buzz. Buzz debuted about a year ago and received great initial interest from users. The buzz around Buzz, though, has died down, and few know what it is or what it offers. Is Buzz dead?

Google Buzz offers users the opportunity to share status updates, photos, videos, and more. You can see updates in real time, filter the results, and, courtesy of its newest feature, you can import data from Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader, and Picasa. The content is shared with Gmail contacts. In the week following its release, a multitude of Gmail users posted more than 9 million updates and comments. The next Facebook? Google hoped so, and it updated and improved Buzz in the following months. And then…Buzz began to suffer from neglect.

According to eweek.com, “Buzz isn’t dead, but has the woeful smell of a service winding down.” It appears now that Google is working to integrate new tools to the Buzz platform, which, again according to eweek.com, “hovers atop Gmail like the ghost of social software past.”

It is speculated that Buzz will play a role in the upcoming Google+1, or Google’s attempt at a social media empire to challenge Facebook. Jeremiah Owyang of Altimer Group, says, “Google hasn’t figured out the secret sauce to how they’ll integrate social media into their existing strategy, they’ve had a series of innovative attempts and a handful of purchases, but haven’t hit their ‘home run’ yet.”

Perhaps they are hoping that Buzz, along with some shiny newly acquired tools, will be the batter that will hit it out of the park.