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Google Buzz is not a rival to Facebook or Twitter, says Google exec Bradley Horowitz — instead he sees it as a platform for conversation, and hopes other services will be able to flow in and out of Buzz.
In an eWeek interview earlier this week, Horowitz, Google’s VP of product management, was asked whether Buzz was intended as a challenger to Twitter and Facebook. He replied:
“Absolutely not. Per what I just said, this is creating a new category of communication. It’s filling a niche, which is not currently met in the market. I think something unique is happening on Buzz that will continue to evolve. It’s hard to create a trend line or extrapolate too much from six days of use, but certainly conversation and the conversational Web is a place where Buzz has excelled. I think it is unique and offers a compelling interesting experience.”
Conversation Is Key
Horowitz also explained that Buzz goes beyond updating your status (like Twitter) or checking in (like Foursquare) — it’s about engagement:
“It’s not just status-casting. It’s not just checking in. It’s really meaningful interactions around meaningful topics within Buzz and it’s reaching the right audience and people are engaged. That kind of value proposition is I think unique to Buzz. I’ve heard that again and again. In the realm of positive feedback, I think that people are finding that the conversational mode of buzz is very, very powerful and the quality of audience is also great.”
Buzz: An Open System
Google’s plan, it seems, is to create an open platform for social messaging, such that Google Buzz is integrated with services all around the web. Horowitz aims to create the “most open, well integrated, well behaving social network in the industry.”
This technical openness could create the kind of developer stampede that made Google Maps, Twitter and Flickr take off. The only unknown is whether technical openness could be in opposition to the private nature of our e-mail inboxes.
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