A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies - Oscar Wilde
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Google asks users to fix its Buzz
MAKING IT UP AS IT GOES ALONG, Google has advised its users to change their settings on its social notworking site Buzz.
Writing in the Google Blog, a Google spokesperson said that shortly after launching Buzz it realised that "we didn't get everything right" and "moved as fast as possible to improve the Buzz experience".
This is PR speak for "everyone screamed that we were stuffing up their privacy".
The blog post said that Google made a number of changes to the getting started experience based on users' feedback, the most significant of which was replacing auto-following with suggestions for people to follow.
This is PR speak for "we changed a few of the functions that meant that you could be stalked by that creepy guy in accounts, because he now thinks you are following him."
Google Buzz now suggests people for you to follow instead. This way, Buzz is still simple to set up but you aren't set up to follow anyone until you choose to do so.
However Google has a bit of a problem in that many users were automatically signed up to Google Buzz before it made these changes and therefore have not got the slightly more secure settings.
Basically it has set up a new confirmation page to make sure that everyone is set up the way they really want to be, rather than what Google initially said they should be. µ
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The problem with social networking - as demonstrated by today's buh-bye-Bebo announcement - is that there will only ever be one. Social networking sites are like disappearing islands, their fundamentally isolated nature causing contact-hungry inhabitants to flee to wherever everyone else is.
Now that people know Facebook is the most popular destination by far, the company has sufficient momentum to steamroller any competitor - regardless of mass. Even Google can't muscle without buying it (unlikely), connecting to it (again...), or by creating a separate but manifestly better end user experience. Experience shows that they should really just stick to search.
Also the bullshit "you can make money without doing evil" mantra has worn thin to the point where it now sounds more like a joke than a slogan.
Google can buzz off.
They should have bought Twitter if they wanted to compete with Twitter. Maybe one day they will learn they are not perfect and are making more and more mistakes.
Thankfully people seem to be wising up and starting to dislike them a bit.
Love the reference to JC Superstar. Awesome.