Give Buzz Another Look

Twitter and blogs have their own online magic. Tweets are perfect for sending out short bite size messages, but they aren't ideal for engaing in a conversation. Blogs are far more effective in getting a thread online and drawing in comments and conversations. But they are more laborious to post, and writers often feel pressure to fine tune and make sure the post is the best reflection of them. 

Is there something in between? 

Yes!  Matt Cutts, Google's SEO guru, keeps his reader up to date with his latest technology recommendations; recently he wrote about Google's Buzz. This could very well be the tool the real estate community has been waiting for. 

To give a quick snapshot of this emerging social media platform, Google Buzz allows Google users to publish their ideas to the world or just to a few of their closest friends or favored business contacts. This platform is integrated into the user's gmail account; comments get sent right to the inbox so it's easy to keep the conversation going. Users can post pictures to enhance their posts, and it can import information from their Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader accounts. Buzz is available on mobile devices, to keep the conversation alive, with real time updates to the conversation. See a screen shot of Google Buzz to the right.

Matt Cutts certainly favors this Google product, and wrote an insightful blog.  To read his thoughts, continue....

Have you given Buzz a try recently? Robert Scoble just asked if it was time to reconsider Buzz. Coincidentally I said almost the same thing in a question and answer session with Danny Sullivan last week at the SMX Advanced search conference.

I’ll repeat what I said last week. Do you remember when you first started on Twitter, and you didn’t know quite what to do with it? Who do I follow? What do I say? I didn’t really “get” Twitter for months. But as I found interesting people to follow and got the hang of it, I began to see the appeal of Twitter and started using it more often. I’ve noticed Buzz is tracing that same trajectory for me: an initial burst, followed by a bit of a slump, and then a steady climb as I found people that make Buzz interesting.

Buzz fits nicely between tweeting and blogging. Twitter is perfect when you want to share a link or a single crystalized idea. But Twitter isn’t as strong for group discussion or expressing medium- to long-form ideas. At the same time, blogging is great when you want a permalinked url that will stand the test of time, but it can be a real pain to write a blog post. I always feel like I have to polish my blog posts and it seems to take me at least an hour to write a blog post no matter what I say.

Buzz has the casual feel of Twitter, but you can dive into a topic pretty deeply. Buzz is easier than a blog post, but can look almost as polished. I find Buzz especially good for asking opinions, because the signal-to-noise ratio is (at least right now) quite high. I think Buzz is incredibly strong for internal company discussions too, so I’m looking forward to Buzz rolling into Google Apps.

To read the original blog post by Matt Cutts, click here.

To learn more about social media products for real estate agents, click here.