Spam Hits Google Buzz Already 135
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Despite only being launched this week, spammers are already targeting Google Buzz, the search engine's social network." If my buzz box is any indicator, the spammers are pretty much the only people actually using Buzz, and until Facebook can integrate, I wonder if that will change. The Times also has a followup on Google's Apologies following various privacy bumbles throughout the launch of Buzz.
Facebook Will Not Acknowledge the New Guy (Score:5, Interesting)
... until Facebook can integrate ...
The only way Facebook would integrate is if it didn't view Buzz as a competitor in anyway. But Buzz is a competitor already in some respects. The damned thing keeps asking me to integrate with my Picassa account. And it is already integrated with GMail and GChat. So you've got ad revenue, messaging and pictures ... now Buzz needs finer tuned privacy control and a developer platform to be a direct competitor with Facebook. That last one is a big sticky mess though and Facebook seems to have done as best as possible with it.
... devoting time and resources to that endeavor makes even less sense. Facebook will sacrifice interaction between it's large user base and the few Buzz-only people in the name of maintaining its superiority. Really it's sad because the user loses out of being able to transfer and interact with users on Buzz ... but when you're as big as Facebook, you just don't care about those kinds of integration competitor benefits and 'features.'
Hilarious that Google got bit on privacy concerns. Facebook learned the lengthy hard way on that one but it does give me hope that people are not entirely offering up their privacy to Google without batting an eye. Maybe the general public is not as doomed as we thought [slashdot.org]?
Anyway, there is no way in hell Facebook would validate Buzz's existence by integrating with them. It would just give their users who already use GMail a chance to seamlessly transfer over to Buzz while keeping up with their archaic Facebook contacts. It would be potential suicide for Facebook to do such a thing if/when Google keeps up expanding Buzz.
Personally I think Buzz targets another market but losing any number of users to Buzz does not make sense in anyway
Totally Riding That Buzz (Score:5, Interesting)
It's missing a lot of options, I guess time will tell if that is the intent or merely TBD yet. I do like how it's integrated with Google Reader. I share a lot of my news offerings with my followers. I don't like that it wants me to integrate with Picassa. I simply have too many Google contacts (some Slashdot readers I've never met!) to have them looking at my pictures!
So the one thing that Buzz has over Facebook is Aardvark [slashdot.org]. I signed up for that three or four days ago and have asked a question [vark.com] (with very positive results) and answered a [vark.com] few [vark.com] questions [vark.com]. I didn't get quite what I wanted out of answering questions although I think the people that answered my question did a pretty good job. How this is different from Yahoo Answers or Wiki Answers seems to be that it's tightly integrated with Buzz and GChat. Also it actively finds things for you to answer. I'm guessing what Google has with mining your e-mail and chats and searches it will use to locate experts for your questions and also pair you with better questions you're more capable of answering. A lot remains to be seen as to whether or not this is an actual beneficial addition or some more of the bloat a Facebook application would have to offer one.
Yes, I have already made two book purchases off of those suggestions from my question. Note that a problem with GChat caused two of my questions (which I tried to designate as separate) get slotted into one question. I could just hear the software thinking: the second question is about authors, he must be continuing his thought.
Personally I'm not leaving Facebook for Buzz. But I'm not decommissioning Buzz. I'm keeping it as a sort of News social network much like The Auteurs [theauteurs.com] and Afternoon Records Community [ning.com] are for my movies and music respectively. Granted none of these niche networks get as much time as the all encompassing Facebook, they still exist harmoniously in the bag of sites I visit. I recognize I'm probably an outlier though.
What's next? (Score:2, Interesting)
If there's anything I've learned over the years watching technology, it's that if everyone is suddenly climbing aboard a certain technology, it's time to find the next big thing.
Social computing may be really hot right now, but I'm wondering what the next big thing is going to be. First we had personal websites, then we moved to blogs, then to social computing and tweeting. What's next? What are you working on or with that is the next step in technological evolution?
Re:Google Buzz's Skyrocketing Usage (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to agree with this. I found buzz to be just about ideal - it's unobtrusive, simple. and more of a 'feed aggregator' than a twitter app.
One of my friends just uses it to share his twitter feed with those of us not using twitter. Another just uses it for occasional comments on his flickr photo stream. I use it just for the occasional IM type comment that I would want to send to 3 or 4 people (not things like "I'm watching the game", but things like "everyone who bet on x owes me money", or "did you see this news story").
Sure, it's kinda pointless. But it does a really good job of combining several disparate feeds of pointless into one simple console that I already have open anyway.
It's a win for me.
Re:What exactly were you expecting? (Score:2, Interesting)
I meant security about authentication. Email is probably more secure than Facebook in terms of knowing that your communication is private (even on Gmail, though only marginally so.) What Facebook means is that when you get a message from someone, you can be fairly sure it came from that person. At least as sure as you can possibly be without that person personally comparing the message you're looking at to the one they sent. Even if you're using public key authentication, there's still the potential for an attacker to get your private key, etc.
Facebook - you know who you're talking to.
Gmail - you do if you've talked to the person through some other medium. Trying to shoehorn it into the Facebook paradigm was a stupid idea.
Re:What exactly were you expecting? (Score:3, Interesting)
Current prices for a facebook account on the spam markets are around $5 per 1000 friends. Creating fake accounts that seem to be people isn't that hard - just scrape pics of hot girls off MySpace, couple with a fake name generator and off you go (assuming you can get past Facebooks defences of course, but then GMail has defences too).
Re:Facebook Will Not Acknowledge the New Guy (Score:3, Interesting)
It didn't used to be.
They seemed to have hit their peak of 'privacy' a while ago.
Back in the day, you only had blocking and limited profiles. But you could restrict all your data.
Then they added groups. Which was great. "Family", "Real Friends","Bar Associates", "Work" which was great. I could complain about work and exclude work. Add photo albums and not let X group see them.
The problem came with their latest update and the "Who can add you as a friend". Previously you could lock it down. Now it's either "Friends of Friends" or "Everybody".
At one point in my profile's history I wouldn't even show up to a friend of a friend. Now they can add me.
Re:Facebook Will Not Acknowledge the New Guy (Score:4, Interesting)
"Someone please try again to explain to me"? Seriously?
People like to talk about themselves. On the Internet and in everyday life. This doesn't really require explanation, nor do I think you actually want one.
You want validation that you're a brave crusader holding your ground against the shallow, attention-whoring masses. Which is ironic, given that you apparently want someone to convince you in the hope that they'll earn your valuable approval (which you won't give -- your mind is clearly made up.)
As the poster above said, if you don't want to use it, don't. There's a lot of utility to social networking that has nothing to do with what you ate for breakfast, but like anything else, Sturgeon's Law applies. The good stuff is rarer than the dross but can be found with only a little effort.
Re:What exactly were you expecting? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, that's why I don't friend people I don't actually know. I don't think I'm unusual in this, at least among those who picked up Facebook back when it was restricted to higher ed.
The thing that makes Facebook superior to Gmail is that if you get a message from Joe Smith on Facebook, and his picture and friends correspond to a Joe Smith you know, Facebook is very good about making sure that it is in fact Joe Smith talking to you. Obviously a random person you've never met is not guaranteed to be a real person - but that's impossible to guarantee.