Who would play you in the movies? Joan Cusack would play Comet Creative PR pro Laura Foust. Mark Wahlberg would play software engineer and Vanderbilt booster Scott Lundgren. Got a Hollywood double, or know somebody with one? Let me know via Contact.
Just in case you've been off the grid for the past two days, the buzz is ... Buzz, Google Buzz, the Giant Questionmark's entry into social media. How much is this being discussed online? Remember Balloon Boy? It's reaching those heights, or lows. There are 1,856 articles about Google Buzz, on you guessed it, a Google search. There were zero articles on Monday, but on midday Tuesday, a peak of about 750 cranked out.
Topic #1 is privacy. PCWorld points out concerns about the feature that compiles a list of a Buzz user's Gmail contacts who users most frequently e-mail or chat with: "Buzz automatically starts following these people and makes the list public, meaning strangers can see who Buzz users have been in contact with." The Silicon Alley Insider takes that a step further: "Imagine ... a wife discovering that her husband emails and chats with an old girlfriend." (Interesting scenario. A "Desperate Housewives" app could do something with that.)
On Cnet, blogger Molly Wood called Google Buzz calls Buzz "a privacy nightmare." Her main worry: The mobile version, which includes GPS functions, and automatically shows your whereabouts to those nearby unless you shut that off. "So be equally prepared for everyone around you to know who you are and where you are when you post to Buzz from your phone." Wood also assails Buzz because it's linked to Gmail, and while social media involves inherent privacy risks, "I do have an expectation of privacy when it comes to my e-mail." Good point.
I have another question: Do we need it? Put another way, is this one more social media platform that brings us closer to having our heads explode?
I want social media platforms that make my life easier. I like the combiners and dividers that have entered the space lately. Threadsy, for instance. It combines Facebook, Twitter and Gmail, so I can see all my messages in one place. Facebook friends lists, threatened by the new Facebook homepage (cue exploding heads) let me build "channels" so I can see aspects of my Facebook life one at a time.
Google Buzz, like Google Wave, is neither a combiner nor divider of my social media life. It's a new competitor. And Google seems to need to compete with everyone and everything right now. Remember when Toyota was everyone's favorite car company? Then it got greedy and the accelerators stuck. That's where Google is right now. The accelerators are stuck, and the Giant Questionmark is crashing into everything.
Where will the stuck accelerator crash next? I'm not sure Google's navigational GPS has any real direction. If Google continues to harvest Facebook data, will Buzz become a competitor to the portal Facebook has become? Is Google Wave now obsolete?
Suddenly the Giant Questionmark is not providing very good answers.
Google Buzz is an attempt to divert from from Facebook and Twitter. Right now, we don't need that. The Big Tent platforms of Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Match.com and Twitter (in that order of relevance.) work well. That's because social media is in a network TV phase. When we reach a more specialized cable phase, maybe we'll need a Google Buzz, or something better. Foursquare is exploring a Travel Channel for social media now. That I can handle. Google Buzz, I don't know. My head is feeling combustible.
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