Today Google launched Buzz to compete directly with Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, etc. It got me to thinking, how do people differentiate between services and what is the stickiness necessary for users to come back. Everyone assumes that no matter what Google does, it will always create a successful product and it is the ultimate threat to a start-up. “Oh-oh, Google entered your space, so you will inevitably be out of business in a few months.” Well this clearly is not true as we saw with Froogle, Dodgeball, Google Video, Google Answers, Google Video and Orkut (I know it has a huge following in Brazil, but it does not touch Facebook) and the jury is still out on Google Voice (I don’t particularly like it yet and the voicemail scribing is terrible). So how do we judge if Buzz will be successful (since Google will not release any negative user metrics)? 2 ways: 1) Does it differentiate itself from existing services 2) does it have the stickiness for people to come back.
1) Differentiation: How different is it to Facebook and Twitter? Will people stop using Facebook or Twitter because Google Buzz has come along? People did not stop using YouTube when Google Video was launched, and we know how that ended. Facebook and Twitter also have open platforms (allowing it to link to other services), so reach is not an issue, which Google utilizes to launch new services. Google is not fundamentally a social interface, but used as a utility to find and store information. Facebook and Twitter are social interfaces that have differentiated themselves from similar services (Facebook was better than Friendster because it was focused on affinity groups and Twitter was better than blogging because it was short and simple and allowed people to provide a proper stream of consciousness). I still can’t figure out what Google Buzz does to differentiate itself beyond being linked to the rest of your Google accounts. Historically that has not been enough as evidenced by Google’s failed products. When I first used Gmail, I immediately saw the functionality that made it so much better than other services. Buzz does not differentiate itself in the same way.
2) Stickiness: I think this relies on how easily people initially pick up functionality and whether it is compelling enough to come back. Second Life from Linden Lab (a company my old firm invested in) was initially successful because it was compelling enough to come back but growth stopped because it took too long to understand how to use it: on average, users picked up functionality in 45 minutes (way too long). The same thing has happened to Google Wave (I still can’t tell you what to use it for and from what I hear it is very innovative). I think the Google Buzz is very intuitive (a status update that ties to your Google profile and all your other Google aps including gtalk updates). I doubt it provides a product that is compelling enough to come back, partly because Google as a product is not used to broadcast what one is doing but rather a utility to find information. Google reader is a successful product but a very small percentage of people share information on there or even interact what others post. I also think that gchat will be a detriment to Buzz because it is a competing status update (and I know they will be integrated), but it will only contribute to confusing users who don’t know where to go to change their status (while in Google). Although simple to use, I ultimately don’t think Buzz has a compelling enough product for people to keep coming back.
I ultimately don’t think Buzz will be a success. This begs the question, if Sergei and Larry want to provide people status updates, why don’t they just go ahead and buy Twitter with their massive pile of cash they have on the balance sheet. It should only cost the $3-4B.
No comments:
Post a Comment