Looking at Different Functionalities of Google Buzz

This day will go down in history as the day of Google Buzz. After Google's press event (which we live-blogged and discussed here) Google put up several posts explaining more about the "buzzworthy" new product.

"Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting," says Gmail and Google Buzz Product Manager Todd Jackson. "It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time."

"We've relied on other services' openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system," he says. "Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We're building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate."

We looked at the promo video for Google Buzz in another article, but Google has also now provided one focusing specifically on Buzz's mobile aspects.

Google Buzz Tech Lead Edward Ho talks about the Gmail aspects of Buzz:

To make sure you don't miss out on the best part of sharing, Buzz sends responses to your posts straight to your inbox. Unlike static email messages, buzz messages in your inbox are live conversations where comments appear in real time.

You can follow the specific people whose posts you want to see, but Buzz also recommends posts from people you're not directly following, often ones where your friends are having a lively conversation in the comments. If you're not interested in a particular recommendation, just click the "Not interested" link and your feedback will help improve the recommendations system. Buzz also weeds out uninteresting posts from the people you follow — collapsing inactive posts and short status messages like "brb." These early versions of ranking and recommendations are just a start; we're working on improvements that will help you automatically sort through all the social data being produced to find the most relevant conversations that matter to you.

Software engineer Justin Zaren talks about photo sharing through Picasa on Google Buzz:

Google Buzz is built right into Gmail and is fully integrated with Picasa Web Albums. Any photos you upload to and share from Buzz are automatically stored in a new unlisted album in your Picasa Web Albums account, so you can view them from either site. It's easy to upload multiple photos at once from Buzz - just click "Insert: Photo" from a new post, select "upload files," and click "Add photos to post" once they're fully uploaded. Since photos are meant to be viewed fast and full-screen, clicking a photo in Buzz opens an embedded viewer designed to give you an optimal viewing experience.

Google Reader users can link their accounts with Google Buzz as well. "Just head over to Gmail and you'll be able to link up your Google Reader account with just a few clicks," says Google's Mihai Parparita  on the Google Reader Blog. "Then, anything you share in Reader will automatically be posted to Buzz. Comments are even shared between both products, so you can view and participate in the conversation wherever you'd prefer."

Remember that Google Buzz is rolling out over the next few days, so if you don't have it yet, you will soon. Google Buzz will become available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features within a few months, according to Google Enterprise Product Management Director Matthew Glotzbach.

Read this article if you want to see what I have to say about search implications and business uses of Google Buzz.

Have You Read This?

> Will Google Buzz Change the Social Media Game?

> Whose Got The Buzz: Yahoo or Google?

> Is Gmail Google's Real Social Network?

Nearly 20% Of Marketing Emails Fail To Arrive

Nearly twenty percent (19.9%) of commercial, permissioned emails never reached consumers inboxes in the United States and Canada in the second half of 2009, according to a new report from Return Path.

Permissioned email reached only 80.1 percent of consumer inboxes in the United States and Canada during the second half of 2009, a .8 percent increase from the 79.3 percent inbox place in the first half of 2009. In the United States and Canada, 3.5 percent of those emails ended up in a junk or bulk emails folder and 16.3 percent were missing with no notification of non-delivery.

In Europe, 85.5 percent of emails reached consumers inboxes, 3.6 percent of emails were delivered to a junk or bulk folder, and 11 percent were missing. In the Asia Pacific region, inbox placement of emails was higher in the second half of 2009 with an 86.9 percent success rate.

"We spent a lot of time in 2009 discussing how inbox placement rates affect ROI, and we're going to continue talking about this issue in 2010. Many senders believe that their email campaigns are achieving a 95% to 98% delivery rate. However, as our latest Email Deliverability Benchmark Report clearly illustrates, senders still do not have the correct data to accurately determine true ROI," said George Bilbrey, President and Co-founder, Return Path.

"If senders and ESPs count only their hard bounces as emails that failed to reach consumers, they're not getting an accurate metric as to how many emails actually made it into subscriber inboxes. Ultimately, only emails that reach a subscriber's inbox can be opened, clicked and converted into a loyal and active customer. Remember, sent minus bounce does not equal delivered."

The top five ISPs for senders to reach consumer inboxes in the United States ranked in order of difficulty were BellSouth, Gmail, MSN, Hotmail, and Yahoo!.

The top five ISPs for senders to reach consumer inboxes in Canada were Primus.ca, Shaw, SaskTel, MTS, and Bell. Primus.ca which uses Postini as part of its email filtering system, failed to deliver 55% of emails that marketers sent to Primus.ca users which represents a 2% increase from the first half of 2009.

The top five ISPs for senders to reach consumer inboxes in the United Kingdom ranked in order of difficulty are Demon, BT Internet, AOL, Orange, and Yahoo!.

Have You Read This?

>10 Reasons Social Media Isn't Replacing Email

>Emails With Coupons Achieve Higher Open Rates

>Majority Of Consumers Want To Interact With Brands Online

 

 

Google Voice Simplifies SMS to Multiple Recipients

Google has taken steps to make sending text messages to multiple recipients a little bit easier with Google Voice. In the past, users had to copy and paste the message for each person on the list.

Google is now letting users send the message to multiple people at once. Users now just need to click on the SMS button at the top of their Google Voice inbox, enter the names/numbers in the "To" field, separated by commas, and write the message.

"Replies from each recipient will be threaded into separate conversations, so you can keep track of them in your Google Voice inbox," explains

Google's Greg Hecht. "To prevent spam, we've set a maximum of five recipients per message."

The feature is also available in the Google Voice Chrome extension in the recently released gallery. Google says it will soon be adding it to the Google Voice mobile app.

Last week Google launched the new Google Voice mobile web app for iPhone OS 3.0 and higher and Palm Web OS devices. It utilizes HTML5.

Have You Read This?

> Google Voice Gets New Free VoIP Service

> Report Indicates Google Bought Gizmo5

> You Don't Need A Google Number To Use Google Voice

Google Wave Gets a Feature for “Following”

Google has added a "follow" feature to Google Wave. The feature is designed to let users stay up to date on public waves of interest. In other words, if there are waves out there that are available to everybody, and you want to follow it, simply click the follow button for that particular wave.

When a user adds you to a Wave, or if you contribute to one, you will automatically be "following" that wave. You can remove waves from your inbox by hitting the "archive" button, but they will come back when they are updated. Users can switch between unfollowing and following waves as often as they like.

"Public waves that are in your inbox simply because you opened them at some point in the past will start to leave your inbox as they get updated," says Google Wave engineering tech lead Casey Whitelaw. "You can also manually remove them with the 'archive' feature, and they will no longer return. We hope this will help with clearing a backlog of unwanted waves."

The "unfollow" feature takes the place of the "mute" feature, which has been part of Google Wave. If you don't want a Wave anymore, just unfollow it. If you need to find a particular wave in the future, you can still search for it, even if you aren't following it.

"Following is the first step towards a set of new tools for managing waves in your inbox," says Whitelaw. "In the future, there will be more control over what kinds of changes will cause a wave to appear in your inbox, and we will soon introduce better support for groups of wave users. We're also thinking of expanding the following concept to let you follow people, groups, and searches."

If you have not yet had an opportunity to use Google Wave, there is a good chance that none of this makes much sense to you. However, you can get an idea of how Wave basically works by reading this.


Have You Read This?

> Google Wave Simplified: How it Basically Works

> Will Google Wave Shape the Future of Online Communication?

> Is Google Wave Getting An App Store?

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