The Rob Blog

Well, we are now 24 hours into Buzz and one thing it’s taught me is that even in the year 2010, people are passionate and protective of their chosen technology.

I have heard it called “the Twitter killer” and an alternative to Facebook. Even Foursquare people are getting uptight.

But if Buzz has only amazed me in one area (hint: it isn in the area of breakout tech) it’s this- Google knows how to roll a product out like no other tech biz in the industry.

Last night, it began… People throwing a fit over the fact that Buzz had been forced upon them. Wanting to know how to turn it off. These same people only 24 hours previously were the ones complaining about the changes to Facebook.

What has been missed in all of the anger is the fact that millions of people who were never tweeting or facebooking have suddenly begun buzzing. They have no hang ups whatsoever. In fact, they seem pretty pleased with the upgrade! This was a huge understanding on the part of Google.

It makes me think that this was less about flexing muscle in the current market and more about simply grabbing more market share in the realtime search/news medium.

Brilliant.

After all, the tweeters will still tweet. (at least for a while) and the facebookers will facebook. (even though FB infuriates them with innovation)

But the millions of Gmail users who do neither of those things and have no attachments or loyalties just got a very peasant, understandable upgrade to their email service, and this is exactly what Google wanted to do.

Why go after Twitter and Facebook when you have millions of people do neither?

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Rob Alderman