Buzz has been integrated within the Gmail environment; in the morning half of the world has spent between 5 and 25 minutes trying to find it a productive use. At first instance and after half a day I have come to this poor conclusion:
If you had the mania of reading the mail as it appears, with that inevitable click on the inbox, now it is also necessary to stand behind every buzzing. And in just one morning, following a few … there are many…
It took me a while to find the business model for Facebook, especially because those of us who are in the 3x (not all) are not so partial to be uploading photos and writing on the boards, with much work to do. I even came to doubt if it was not a new way to waste time.
But when we see how many millions are tucked inside, we understand that business is not what Facebook makes, which is not much, indeed;
- A board to write what you do and know what others wrote.
- A space to upload pictures that you tagged in that terrible pose with crossed eyes.
- A space to write, pure text
- A network of contacts and events
- Sale of stuff (Spanish Idiom: “calaches”) and basic pages.
Maybe I missed something, but it happens that Facebook does not do much more; by now, we have seen few interesting developments on its API rather than small toys and simple pages. It is what people do inside what holds the business model, millions are already there.
We understand the Internet as a bunch of pages linked together, with a search engine to reach them with an email to communicate, and in some cases, with some tools to upload content. Facebook is like other Internet, but not in pages but people, interconnected, sharing and communicating events. This is why large firms have followed it like: AutoDesk, Bentley, ESRI, they all have a page for almost every product or service, from a basic template, but with thousands of fans following them now.
It is possible that the phenomenon of social networking is not a so passing revolution under this scheme. Because all do almost the same, many have robust API, but in this, win the one which popularize more, and hold itself generating business. For now, the gain is in traffic, the formation of network of followers, Web distribution; but surely while I finish this post already exist very structured plans for exploiting this world of 350 million.
So Google, after its failed attempts (such as Orkut), goes here, now with Buzz inside it won’t be difficult to do battle to these networks. Then it will do the same with Wave, and the reason is obvious: no one has its email on Twitter or Facebook, everyone, even the creators surely are in Gmail, what is left for now is to exploit it without creating a new social network but carrying its functionality into Gmail.
While it doesn’t make us waste any more time… welcome to it.
It is the last straw, je je, so critical that I am of these waves, and at the end of the post I conclude by saying this:
Here you can follow me on Facebook