So Gmail now incorporates Buzz, which to all intents and purposes looks like a watered down version of twitter/facebook with picasa and youtube links replacing twitpic and twitvid and I stated in the last post that I don't wish to have anything to do with this monstrosity.
Regular readers of this blog, and those of you who follow <a href="http://myrealwall.blogspot.com">my REAL wall</a> know what I think of crass status updates on facebook. For those of you who don't, my opinion of facebook status updates is that they are a nice thing to gossip about. And that's it. I believe facebook status updates have little intellectual value outside of self-promotion and marketing.
Recently Google have become obsessed with chasing this vaucous market oh tweets and status updates at the expense of real content and this ultimately has led to Buzz, which is a show of just how badly out of their depth they really are.
Google has always been about indexing content on the web. They are great at it and with their acquisition of Blogger from Pyralabs just over 10 years ago they moved into the business of providing a platform to create that content too.
Numerous acquisitions followed that blazed a trail for the company, showing that they were commited to content creation and sharing of knowledge and resources, such as picasa and youtube, which were both great acquisitions. They missed out on flickr of course.
With the media hyping up facebook and twitter, Google should have realised that the content creation tools had already been made in the area of microblogging and they should have chosen to catlogue that, but I think with the launch of Buzz they have signalled that content indexing is not enough for them. But their product is hugely flawed, years behind the competition and just unpalatable in so many ways, that it's unlikely in my opinion that takeup will justify the investment. Social networks are already cemented and google may just have to face that.
I think even hardened Google fans (I myself am one) will find todays rollout of Google Buzz disappointing. Really, you should ask yourselves, would this product, which is essentially a bit of a crap aggregator and oh-so-2007-Twitter/facebook clone have stood a chance of getting media coverage, let alone users if it had not been tagged on to the gmail interface? I think not.
So Google appear to be stuck in this mindset that they want a piece of the social pie and nothing we can say will change that. So how about considering what they could have done instead of release this patronising clone.
Firstly I feel that Google had already reinvented the wheel of social networking a few months ago with google wave. Although I didn't see it then, within the realm of the new social direction the company seems to want to take it makes perfect sense.
Google should have chosen to integrate wave-like features instead of wheeling out the same old "status update" rubbish that we've seen on twitter, facebook and ning among other places in thelast few years. The consumer is drowning in status updates, which contain little real meaty information in depth.
Why wave though? On Twitter and facebook there is no-one I particularly want to create content with. I don't actually KNOW most of them in real life. However, my gmail contacts include my closest friends, my work colleagues and my family. These include people I would happily write a blog post with, or share (privately) work information through the email.
The gmail environment would be far better suited to being a workspace and collaborative area online for the creation of deep content, than to being a social area for discussing what my dog dug up last night.
To use a REAL wall analogy, my gmail space is my creative office space, a place for thinking and creating. Twitter and facebook are the pub where soundbites are an acceptable form of communication. By using the gmail interface to send status updates sends out the wrong message and panders to the lowest common demoninator. google need to pull this back and focus on the creation of much deeper content through sharing, rather than the piecemeal offerings of many, so that Buzz can rise above facebook on it's own terms, that of collaborative content generation, rather than individual posturing.
And ultimately, google would own all this deep content. Although it may not be an easy short term solution and will not immediately grab those status updatin' facebookers, google need to aim higher rather than directly at the opposition if they hope to hit the target.
(Andy Hoang is an e-learning advisor at Roehampton University - any opinions on this blog are his own and in no way reflect those of his employer)
I was digging around in a box earlier tonight for something and came across a very sad sight. Everyone's favourite miniature Hero was looking a little dejected and out of sorts.
I have to confess now that since returning from Algeria, mini-Andy has not been quite himself and his recovery has waited while maxi-Andy went out and lived it up with postcards and that sort of thing.
Disgraceful.
So today the comeback begins for 2010.
Keep watching this space for more mini-Andy adventures!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/property_and_mortgages/article6990719.ece
Buy a copy today! Further write-up when I get to a computer (I.e. when I'm not freezing in Greenwich park on my phone)
It became apparent that this was a hobby and not a business, so the matter was dropped and Mr Hoang was not fined a penny
I and the readers of my REAL wall are so relieved that the council have backed down over this without unnecessary fines and it's such a relief to know that it only took a 50ft sign over Tower Bridge, blu-tacced protest postcards on the door of the Town Hall and a sustained blog campaign to get them to do so. my REAL wall will continue to showcase the most innovative mailart in London and I'm looking forward to including a postcard from the council on my REAL wall soon.
This months press coverage is in a local magazine called Westside
The write-up is on page 10, under a headline about the local library running out of books.
I have to confess I don't particularly like this write-up. I wrote a full write-up of the incident and they've pretty much left out the facts and written up a pretty poor, humourless article. There's no mention of my REAL wall, the headline screams that the council have actually levied the fine, which they haven't and the picture is a generic pic not one that I sent. I'm most miffed that your protest mail hasn't made it into print anywhere too, which is a real shame.
Oh well, any publicity is better than nothing I guess, and I've finally got some time to get your protest post to the council this weekend, so watch this space.
Quote of the weekend came from Khiem who said about the council
"I think I might just call them and tell them to write you a public apology to save themselves a world of pain"
I think he might be on to something there...
Here's what we saw when we turned up at Tower Bridge for the filming of the next Nokia advert yesterday.
A 50ft screen shaped like an arrow was hanging from a crane advertising Nokia maps.
I was scheduled to have the message
"Thanks to all the people who have sent post to my REAL wall. The council will never get us!"
Readers I need your help ASAP!
Yesterday I saw an advert which read
"Have a special announcement to make? We will make your message spectacular. Service is free of charge, first come first served"
I thought about it for about 2 seconds and picked up the phone. Having a chat with the boss of a large advertising company I talked them through my recent my REAL wall/council windup and said that the announcement I would like to make would be something like
"Sending postcards is not a crime - leave us post fans alone Hammersmith council!"
The guy liked the sound of it and has booked me in to film on Saturday.
The idea is that they are putting up a 50ft billboard somewhere in London to display this message.
I need to send them an appropriate message by the end of today, and thought I would open this one out to my readership.
So, what should the billboard say? Think my REAL wall. Think council. Think text message/twitter length wit.
And hurry up about it!
On Friday, I got a call from my mortgage advisor telling me that the Sunday Times had been in touch with him. They wanted to interview a young couple who had recently taken out a mortgage, and so he thought of me and Elena, and gave me a call.
The paper arranged for a photographer to be around in an hour and interviewed me on the phone as to why I chose the mortgage I did and next thing you know, me and Elena were on the front page of the Sunday Times money section!
I could hardly believe my eyes on Sunday, when I picked up the paper and saw our thumbnail on the front page in the top left hand corner, the very first thing you see when you turn to the money pages, and all my friends have remarked how little sense it makes that I, who care not a jot about the stuff, should be there looking like some money guru! As Jason says "...it just doesn't compute"
Amusingly, the paper reported my name as Anthony Hoang, the second time that my name has been spelt wrong in the papers. And yes everyone I know has ripped the piss out me for that already, so feel free to add yours below...
For REAL wall fans, me and Elena tried our very hardest to get your mail in.
The picture on the front page, which is also featured on the online version of the story was taken with the official REAL wall as the white background. The photographer was looking for a white background and said "Could you take those postcards down and we'll take the picture over there"
D'oh!
Inside the paper, on page 4 me and Elena are pictured on the stairs. After clearing the place up a little, Elena slyly draped Okadascat's knitted banner across the top of a table in front of us, and I set up a postcard from Richard Canard at our feet on the staircase.
Desperately we tried to maneuvre ourselves so that the photographer would take a pic of a postcard, but to no avail. Shucks. Maybe next time.