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Is Twitter About To Terminate Google Buzz?

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Categories: Google Buzz, Social Media, twitter

Google Buzz was launched earlier this year in February with high expectations and was even being touted as a serious potential competitor to Twitter. Its button appeared on Mashable which is the worlds largest social media blog. Its leverage was expected to be massive  driven by the huge installed base of  Gmail users with an interface similar to Twitter. Is Google Buzz About to Become Extinct

The Chikita research network measured the number of searches for “Google Buzz” on February 9 at about 1,500 searches which was 15 times more than the the number of searches for Twitter. It received over 9 million comments and posts  on social media, peaking at 160,000 per hour during the launch.

Over a month later the number of  searches had dropped to one per day whereas Twitter Google searches had remained steady at an average of 87 per day.

Buzz-v-Twitter-Google

So where are we now 8 months later?

Mashable has removed the Buzz button and replaced it with a Digg button (see how long that lasts) and the Facebook share and the Twitter retweet button haven’t moved.

I also took the term “Google Buzz” and  Twitter and using the Google Insights tool I found that the decline is almost complete with Twitter showing an increased average over the past thirty days of ninety average searches  per day but Google Buzz almost without a pulse at zero. (see below)

Is Google Buzz about to become extinct

So Twitter has continued to grow adding over 60 million users in the last seven months from a user base of  only 3 million two years ago.

Twitters success is based on its simplicity. Google’s social media ventures seem to over complicate things and despite its deep pockets it is still struggling  to get traction in social networking and is certainly starting to look over its shoulder at Facebook.

So is Google Buzz about to become extinct just like Google Wave?

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  • http://thubten.me Thubten

    Why is this a surprise? I turned BUZZ off about an hour after it was launched into my Google account. I saw it as an assault by Google. Apparently even more thought it was just plain annoying.

    Maybe Google will do more research next time, before launching something so intrusive and useless.

  • http://www.burtchiropractic.com Eduard Burt, D.C., MUAC

    Most likely it will not be terminated by Google later on. I have spoken to a guy who works for Google and he informed me that the cost of keeping BUZZ running is very minimal. Google wave was very expensive to keep It running.
    Regardless of the Google’s decision I am in the process of replacing BUZZ with a different Social Media Button.

  • http://www.theorganicview.com June Stoyer

    I use both on my site. I like to communicate with twitter and most of my followers are going to find my articles via twitter as opposed to google buzz.

  • http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eileen-hung/9/2/32b Eileen Hung

    Don’t get me wrong. I am a die hard Google fan, but Google’s attempt to conquer all avenues of the viral world as fallen short. The installation of Google buzz was just another way for them to cash in on what made Twitter what it is today. Sorry Google, but that market has been tapped. Google should focus on what they’re good at, and that’s not microblogs.

    I’ve tried both and Google buzz falls short because it’s very similar to cliche networks you’ll find in Facebook. Twitter can reach the masses in ways Google buzz cannot. Unlike Twitter’s easy search option, Google makes you jump over hurdles to find people you know personally. Don’t even know how you’re suppose to reach out to a different market. It’s no wonder why Google buzz is not making the cut.

  • http://www.kylelacy.com Kyle Lacy

    What’s Google Wave?….kidding but I stongly doubt Google Buzz is a threat to the ever growing Twitter. Good post

  • Pingback: Google Needs to Put the Buzzkill on a Dead Product | Techi.com

  • Adam Sah

    guys– in practical terms, Buzz is a feature of gmail with an open API and a few connectors, nothing more and nothing less. It’s not supposed to “stand on its own” and it gets plenty of traffic courtesy of gmail’s humongous userbase.

    Wave was an overgrown research project that should have been tested internally more before being released. Don’t compare Wave and Buzz.

    As an avid Wave and Gmail user, I hope Google will decide to eventually “promote” buzz posts to your inbox. As a former google engineer, I’d be shocked if hundreds of Google engineers and product managers aren’t thinking the same thing, and if somebody hasn’t done a “20% project” hack (chrome extension or other JS hack) to try this already. If not, I hope somebody reads my post!!

    hope this helps,
    adam

  • Ro Po

    Google suffers from gigantitis, a disease first chronicled with Microsoft, a company that in the past has thought that it could release anything and because of its size and market position, it would develop a following. In the Google variant, gigantitis beta, Google clouds its release of untested product by putting the “beta” tag on everything it does for years. Google Wave was a solution in search of a problem. Google Buzz was a “me too” product that assumed it could capture some of Facebook’s magic just by knocking it off and forcefeeding it to Gmail users.

  • http://BestSellerAuthors.com Warren Whitlock

    I saw Google Buzz as more of a tool than a destination. Had the privacy issues been handled right, we may have all would up using it as our default reader.

  • Sue Quint

    I vote yes. Shoot it. Put it out of it’s misery. As it is, I can’t keep up with Facebook and Twitter. Why would I want another social media site?