I have been a user (or is that addicted) of social computer applications since I was old enough to care. In the early 90's I enjoyed participating in closed BBS applications since. In 1994 I discovered a couple of computer nerds who seemed to be spending large amounts of time in the computer science lab writing and reading lots of information in Notepad. They of course were using one of the very first versions of MIRC and participating in whatever teenage computer nerds discussed back then. I of course joined the nerds and would spend a lot of my free time exploring the many and varied channels of IRC.
Since then I have always been quick to adopt new social Internet applications. Not long after IRC I started using ICQ, my ICQ number is #866536 which makes me one of the very first users of ICQ and I still have this account today. I went onto use MSN, Yahoo Chat, Skype, various blogs and of course MySpace , Facebook and Twitter.
It was with great interest when I woke up on Wednesday and started reading my morning RSS feeds to discover Google Buzz.
It was a very smart move for Google to convert their 100 Million Gmail users into a social network, basically overnight.
When I am introduced to a new social Internet application the first thing I think about is, how am I going to use it?
Throughout the last 15 years of using social applications to communicate on the Internet I have noticed one constant always remain true. The social circles I participate in, do not cross over from one platform to the next, because most people connect with only one or two at most. Of course there are exceptions and some of my friends, family or work colleagues join me on more than one, however as a general rule I find my audience to be different on each platform. Interestingly I do not get to choose my audience on these platforms either, although of course I can adjust my audience on each platform by removing and inviting users.
A quick run down of my audience with these applications for me as of today is as follows:
Facebook : 90% Family and or close friends audience.
Yahoo Chat: 90% Business communication.
Xfire: 100% gaming communication.
Twitter: A mixed bag of audience which I think of as just "public". Oh and of course to rub shoulders with famous people.
MSN: Friends from all parts of life.
ICQ: Does anyone apart from Russian girls with web cams use this anymore?
GTalk: Friends and past work colleagues.
Blogger: Anyone that cares to read.
LinkedIn: 100% business
What does it matter who my audience are within these applications? Well for me the audience decides how I use a social application. Lets look at some quick examples of how and where I would publish the content:
Sharing my travel status and personal thoughts : I would use Facebook for this as sharing this type of message with my family and close Friends is the objective. I don't want to tell my gaming buddies or random twitter users my travel plans and personal thoughts.
Sharing my work status, what I am working on or how busy I am.
For this I use Yahoo Chat and LinkedIn. It would not be appropriate to use Facebook for this type of content.
Sharing many interesting technical or humour articles I find on the web.
I currently share these via Google Reader and or Twitter. I daintily don't want to be sharing all this content with my family or business networks.
One thing is for sure, if I published everything to everyone, most people would block me because of the amount of content I share, with only a small amount of it being relevant to each person.
So with all these existing social applications and networks how and where is Buzz going to fit in?
One of the things Google Buzz achieves through its integration with the full Google suite of products is the ability to organise your contacts into groups. You can create an audience group for any type of content that you want to publish in Buzz and before you make your post you can choose who your audience will be.
How do you achieve this functionality in Twitter? You run multiple accounts. I guess you could do that same in Facebook and most of the other applications. This is not a workable solution for me.
I don't think a lot of work or thought has gone into this grouping contacts and choosing who to publish to as yet. Maybe its just there because it came with the integration with other applications?
I personally believe this functionality is a master stroke, if I could ever manage to get 100% of all my online network within Google Buzz, I could drop most of the other applications and Google Buzz would become the one central place for all my social Internet activities.
How am I going to use Google Buzz? I am going to start publishing all my content through Buzz and as my network builds I will define my target audience to suit. Who knows, with functionality like this, Google just might become the online social application leader.
Sucsintely put scott - interesting reading
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