What if Google Buzz wasn’t about owning the drinks, but the bar itself? In other words, what if it’s purpose wasn’t as a place for users to converse, but as THE place where all user conversations happen?
In other other words, what if Buzz wasn’t really trying to be like Facebook or Twitter, but more like Friendfeed or other third-party content aggregator? That’s the thinking of Forrester analyst Augie Ray.
In his post, Google, Gmail, Relevance Filtering & the Future of Social Media, Ray asks, ”[W]hat if Google isn’t aiming to compete with Twitter and Facebook but instead with Seesmic and Hootsuite?”
Ray follows that question with another: “What if Google doesn’t care about owning the stream so much as accessing the content and owning the place where consumers look?”
Serving as a content aggregation tool might be where Buzz’s usefulness really lies, but only if it can solve one pressing problem, that of relevance. “[W]hat is the one thing at which Google excels, more than anything else,” asks Ray. He shouts the battle cry in no uncertain terms, “Relevance!”
I’m sure you heart that notion as much as I. Michael Arrington certainly does. He says we’re no better off now than we were a decade ago. “It’s a mess, but we don’t complain much about it because we don’t know there’s a better way,” he says. I’m sure you would agree, the Web is currently a pretty splintered place.
The main thrust of analyst Ray’s post is not to tout the virtues or advantages to using Buzz but, rather, to discuss what he refers to as “Relevance Filtering.”
He suggests that the main problem with today’s social media tools is that they are people-centric. We friend or follow a certain user and fall prey to the entire volley of their posts, tweets and status updates. Continue adding friends and, eventually, the noise becomes thunderous and unbearable.
Instead, what if we could filter that noise so that we are only made aware of topics that have relevance? “The company that not only aggregates our friends’ lifestreams but turns them from data into interesting and useful information would own the world,” states Ray.
Whether Google is the entity destined to wear that mantle, or it’s left to Facebook or some as yet unknown social network or app, I know not. The one thing I do know is that the watchwords of the new Web are: Aggregate, curate and filter. The better we’re able to achieve that, the more useful the Web will become.
What do you think? In what ways would relevance filtering be beneficial?
Tags: Google Buzz, Social Media
Paul,
I think this strategy makes the most sense. One mitigating factor is that unlike you and I the vast majority of social media users have less than 100 connections on Twitter and under 300 on Facebook. But I still think the noise level is an issue for “normal” people like that.
Google is good at determining relevance but only when there is a mass amount of data they can use. This is demonstrated with the way they run Google AdWords. Ads that perform better for a search are determined to be more relevant and move up in the listings. Ads the perform poorly (where users immediately return to search again) are demoted in the listings. However, ads with lower click volumes can take months to get any relevance indication at all.
The question is does Google have a large enough sample with Buzz to make their relevance engine run? As I pointed out in my Buzz post last week (http://www.1goodreason.com/blog/2010/02/12/why-google-keeps-missing-with-social-media/), with only 10% of the market and that skewed heavily to technical minded people I’m not sure they have a good sample.
Excellent post.
Chris
Filtering for relevance would certainly be helpful more often than not, but … would it potentially cut down on the Serendipity Effect? For example, your (and I’m making this up; not sure if you did this or not) Flickr photo celebrating New Orleans’ Super Bowl win comes into my Buzz stream and catches my attention; it reminds me that I’d been meaning to drop you a line to discuss partnering on a project. Now had I set up “relevance filters,” I probably would not have thought to enter “Super Bowl” as a desired keyword phrase and would have missed your post completely.
So I guess I’m arguing that a people-centric approach is often what I *do* want. The problem, as Chris gets to in his comment above, is that when we’re following hundreds of people, all those updates can be overwhelming!
Chris, Bryan – Good points both of you. Relevance is key, but you’re correct Bryan, it can limit serendipity that so often is the hallmark of social media engagement. Now, as to your statement about partnering on the project, feel free to call me anytime! (And, yes, I know you made that up, but I’m banking on serendipity!)
But it seems to me that the problem is not this simple. I do want to follow a person, but only part of that person perhaps. Do you want a co-workers personal life? Do you want a family member’s business life?
Right now all social media I use has lots of teeny-tiny bits and streams that wind up with everything disjointed, lost, confused because “categories” are all jumbled together. The meaningful is hidden by the meaningless. My mom’s birthday discussion is hidden below someone’s Farmville posting (yes I keep turning off every game notice I come across … but new ones emerge the next day).
I am really liking Wave right now as a project discussion item (replacing all sorts of threaded email), but then again it is for a closed conversation in my humble opinion. Partly because it only works so well when you scale it up. I can bring certain people into certain conversations. It is however missing lots of nice features.
Will buzz increase/help me focus and get the job of life done? Only time will tell.
Are my skills needed in this fictional project?
Better things are out there … we just have to discover them … and every attempt moves us closer to a better thing.
Don, it seems as if we keep grasping for the brass ring, but are unable yet to lay hold of it. Maybe it doesn’t yet exist. I suppose all this has to happen in baby steps or something. As you say, every attempt moves us closer. Thanks for the comment.