Today, Google has released the official Google Buzz Button & Counter. I have to say it is rather good looking

Previously there were buttons being made by third party sites like Buzrr.com & Rebuzzthis.com. Both of these worked fine, but Google decided to release their own. There are a bunch of companies that have already agreed to utilize this new Buzz button. They include all of the following, plus several more: Glamour, TweetDeck, YouTube, Disqus, PBS NewsHour, Vinehub, SocialWok, The Washington Post.

It is very simple to add the buzz button to your website. Simply go to http://buzz.google.com/stuff.

Whether this will help Buzz become more popular among social media outlets, is yet to be seen, but it’s a good start. What do you think? Do you like the new button?

Ever since launching Buzz in February, Google has taken a ton of steam from various media sources as well as the government and FTC. They have been under investigation, and threatened with lawsuits. The reason is all because many feel that Google had violated gmail users’ privacy rights when they integrated Buzz into their mail service. In doing this, they forced members to follow others that they had chatted with or emailed in the past. No option was provided to allow or disallow members from being followed or from following others.

Well, now it’s almost 3 months later, and Google is taking another step to try and redeem itself from those it offended. Sometime in the coming few weeks, they will begin to make users “double check” their buzz settings. The following screen will be shown to users of Buzz. Read the rest of this entry »

Many Google Buzz users have been asking for this since day one. It’s finally here! Google has vastly improved the collapsibility of comments. Up until now, only “previous comments” were collapsible within buzzes with a lot of comments. This meant that when you visited your Buzz page, you would see every single newly listed comment since your last visit. This was extremely annoying to most users.

Now, as of today (some accounts have not yet been updated), new comments will be collapsed as well. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s annoying, isn’t it? Google announced Buzz, got you all excited, and then they turned around to whisper “By the way, Android and iPhone will only have the mobile app at the moment”. Sure, you can get a “Google maps layer”, but why settle for that when by using the magic link* that I mentioned in my previous post, you can skip the queue and have Buzz running on Windows Mobile before it’s released!**

Here’s how;

Buzz on Windows Mobile in 3 easy steps

1) Download Opera Mobile***

2) Once installed, navigate to the magic link: https://m.google.com/app/buzz?force=1

3) Enjoy a slightly limited**** but oh-so-much-better-than-nothing version of Buzz, which you can run on your Windows Mobile.

It’s not perfect, and I suppose depending on your mobile’s resolution, you will get better or worse results. However just as with a lot of things I prove possible on my own site, never assume just because (in this case) Google says there’s no version, it means there’s no way of getting it on your phone. Read the rest of this entry »

Although it had a shaky start, riddled with privacy issues, some of which FTC officials are still quite angry about, Google buzz has the potential to be an extremely disruptive force in the social networking arena.  Although I feel that Facebook has clearly solidified it’s position as the top social site on the net for at least a good 5 years, not to mention it strays far from the likes of buzz in user interface, the newer less engaging site Twitter, could be in danger.  Here are four reasons why, over the next 18-24 months, Buzz will likely overtake Twitter and emerge as a major force on the social net.

#1 Google Will Utilize it’s Huge Network to Spread Buzz
Although controversial with privacy flaws, we saw how powerful Google’s gigantic reach has on the launch of a new product.  Within hours of Buzz’s launch, thousands of users were already interacting with each other.  Google simply used the popularity of one product, Gmail, to quickly launch another product, Buzz.  This was just the tip of the iceberg for Buzz.  Google can and will likely integrate Buzz into a majority of it’s already popular products.  Read the rest of this entry »

Have you been wondering why your website isn’t getting any traffic sent to it from Google Buzz, even though you have people commenting and liking your blog posts? The reason for this is because website tracking services like Google Analytics are not picking up the referrer from Buzz. Google Buzz (Gmail) uses HTTPS rather then HTTP. This means all connections are sent over a secured server, and referrers will not be sent. So, I have good news. You may infact be getting a lot of traffic sent to your website from Google Buzz, but you won’t be seeing it in your tracking results.

The question arises, “Can we track Google Buzz traffic to our sites another way?”
Read the rest of this entry »

This blog post will provide you with a series of Polls and Survey Questions about your experiences and opinions of Google Buzz. Please answer as many as you can. The first section consists of poll questions, and the second consists of open-ended questions. All open-ended questions and poll questions in which you choose “other” should be answered in the comment section at the bottom of this blog.

The idea of this questionnaire, is to get as large of a response as possible so that we can come up with conclusive data. We encourage you to share it with friends, re-tweet it, re-buzz it, and submit it to your favorite social bookmarking sites, etc. The more people that answer, the better our results will be. We will compile the data and release another article explaining the results we get. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone is sure to have seen them. Those incessant Twitter updates in your Buzz feed. There are several different ways to accomplish this, including probably the most popular Buzz Can Tweet. But my premise is that just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean that you should.

Buzz, Twitter and Facebook all serve different purposes and audiences. Google has even admitted as much. When asked by eWeek if they were aiming to compete with Twitter and Facebook, a Google executive said that Buzz was meant to compliment those services and their real aim was to enable meaningful web conversation.

So if the best use of Buzz is to compliment those other social networking services does it make much sense to just treat Buzz as a social media aggregator?

5 reasons why Twitter and Buzz should play separately:
Read the rest of this entry »

A little over a month since the release of Google Buzz, and the overall opinion on the web seems to be a mixed bag. According to www.amplicate.com, Buzz tallied a vote of 63% in favor of it sucking, while other sources around the web hail Buzz like its the next thing to take the internet by storm. Regardless of opinions, Buzz is still early in its growing process, and its obvious Google has a lot to do in order to capture more users. Let’s take a look at the two most talked about positives and negatives of this new social networking service.

Read the rest of this entry »

Social networks have really come a long way since the internet began. First there was a social network site called “Six Degrees of Separation” which formed in early 1997. It wasn’t until 2003 that Myspace was formed, and late 2006 that Facebook was open to everyone (not just college and highschool students). 2006 also marked the beginning of Twitter. It wasn’t until February of 2010 that Google finally came out with Buzz. Before Buzz, Google has owned social networking site Orkut which has the majority of it’s users currently living in Brazil and India. It never really caught on in America and Europe. It has only been several weeks since Buzz launched, but I am already seeing some trends form.

Professionalism really isn’t a characteristic of Twitter, Myspace, or Facebook. However, since the launch of Buzz, I have noticed that the amount of “Professionalism” displayed on the site is far and above that of other popular social networking sites. While users of twitter tend to befriend just about anyone that seems even slightly interesting, and facebook users tend to follow friends and family, Buzz has been used differently. Users on Buzz seems to be using the service to broaden their knowledge by following experts in certain fields. Buzz has been used to collect opinions and ideas in a professional manner. The amount of childish, immature comments I see on there is minute compared to those that I see on Facebook and Twitter. Read the rest of this entry »