Although Google has made a number of ventures into the social space (Wave, Latitude, Profiles, etc.), they have yet to capture audience and mindshare like competitors Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace. Google Buzz, an interesting and troubling new foray by the company, is the most recent shot across the bow of the major social players. Having spent a day or two looking at the product, I’ll share some of my early feedback.
At its core, Buzz is a content sharing network that exists loosely within Gmail and Google profiles; content shared publicly within Buzz is populated within Gmail and to the profile. To participate in Buzz, one must agree to have a Google profile, a place “visible on the web so friends can find and recognize you.” Notably, the Google profile is at the center of Google’s social search efforts.
As I’ve written in the past, Google’s has had to walk a very fine line with how they “reveal” what they know about your social circle. Realistically, Google sits on behavioral social network data that is of equal value to what is created in Facebook or Myspace. Mining our web search patterns, our chat and email logs, and our travels across the web with analytics, Google knows who we connect with. The challenge Google has always faced is putting this information into play in a way that doesn’t freak everyone out. Google Profiles were a first step in that direction, asking people to list their sites and friends with a promise of better search positioning (sound familiar?).
As the profile and social network play an increasingly important component in search relevance judgments, it is in Google’s interest to leverage the vast social network data it already has. With Buzz, Google can pre-populate friends lists in a slightly less than creepy way, and then leverage that information in social search via the profile. The big win with Buzz isn’t Google’s competition into Twitter or Facebook’s space (Buzz isn’t vaguely a Facebook or Twitter killer), but rather the data value Google is going to reap through a massive profile-creation effort. Buzz just might be glue necessary to encourage people to articulate the extant network connections in Google. For Google, it is more important that you use Buzz once than if you use it on an ongoing basis.
What are the implications of a system like Buzz? It is a pretty interesting case of what might be thought of as data leveraging. As more of our patterns are analyzed in a range of systems, corporations are going to be challenged manage our confrontation with our patterns. I recall a conference I attended where some senior developers at a messaging analytics firm were discussing the creepiness factor inherent in showing people their behavioral patterns. Experience and design patterns are rare for this sort of confrontation, and Buzz is an interesting case.
If such data-leveraged confrontations are going to become more frequent, we are challenged by implications of ubiquitous recording. For example, Buzz is pre-populated with the “people you email and chat with most.” One doesn’t need to be a Goffman scholar to know that a public listing of the people we chat with most presents social hazard. It is remarkable to observe how often companies get the defaults of sharing wrong.
While we’re talking about privacy implications of Buzz, here are a few other points I’ve noticed as I look over the terms of service.
- As I’ve mentioned, to use Google Buzz you must agree to have a Google profile created in your name. Doing so shares things like your contact network and your accounts on other Google sites. These are the defaults, which can be changed with effort.
- You can’t delete your Google Buzz account. If you create a Google Buzz account and wish to delete it, you have to delete your entire Google profile (killing your search listing, etc. at the same time).
- If you wish to remove Google Buzz items, you must find them and delete them (“You have the option to remove your comments on others’ posts individually if you’d like”)
- Finally, you are required to use your first and last name in Google Buzz (“you need to have a public Google profile which at a minimum includes your first and last name”)
Google Buzz is a truly interesting attempt from Google to leverage the vast social network resources that exist within their systems. The implications of such a move are profound – for the company and for our experience with large-scale behavioral information.
Update: Google has responded to widespread criticism of the privacy defaults issue. Many are uncomfortable with the following/follower pre-population, so Google has offered some new ways to manage these lists. Notably, Google’s post still asks that you create a public profile – something completely unnecessary if you don’t have one already (that is, no one can see your pre-assigned contacts until they’re shared with a Google Profile).
I know this is cynical, but I’ve seen this happen enough to know that these “mistakes” often aren’t accidental. As danah boyd has written previously, “In other words, this is “slippery slope” software development. Given what I’ve learned from interviewing teens and college students over the years, they have *no* idea that these changes are taking place (until an incident occurs).” It is disturbing to see Google going down this road, trading PR for personal information as a calculated trust violation.
Fred Stutzman is a doctoral student, researcher and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. He studies how people use social media.
