Watchers of the Internet scene were aware, as Taiyo Johnson reported, that local businesses no longer need a website. In its Local Business Center, Google works hard to develop listings for all local businesses. Now the Google Local Business Center is turning into a small business blog dashboard. Each business has a Place Page.
As Google advises, you can now post to your Place Page.
Posting to your Place Page allows you to give Google Maps users recent updates about your business. These posts can be changed quickly, so posts to your Place Page allow the Local Business Center to keep up with the pace of your business. Once you post a message expect 5-10 minutes before it shows on the Place Page.
If you found that a somewhat surprising development, then hold on to your hats since Google now seems to be trying to supplant Facebook and Twitter in offering a new type of social media, Buzz.
Google Buzz is Google’s attempt at tackling the latest social networking craze. While Google has tried before at taking this market over with its own services such as Orkut, Knol, Picasa to name a few – none are even close to being true rivlas with the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
So Google Buzz will let you see all your contact’s status updates from a wide variety of networks and allow you to see them all from the comfort of your own Gmail account. This means it is in pretty close competition with sites like Friendfeed as well as Facebook – who has also started to integrate messages from other locations. I guess if you can’t beat them – join them, take all their stuff, put it all on your site… and call it Google Buzz!
Provided you’re happy to go with Google as your Internet infrastructure, it all looks pretty appealing. However the rocky progress of the Local Business Center shows that relying on computer based systems without human over-ride can produce very problematic results. It will be interesting to see whether Google can finetune Buzz and get it to appeal on a consistent basis to its users. First signs leave that as a big question mark.
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- Will you be using Google Buzz? (guardian.co.uk)
I have been trying out this new Google Buzz and it is definitely very similar to Twitter. What’s even better is that you can actually connect your Twitter account to it. I’ve never been a fan of Twitter. I find opening too many sites and maintaining too many accounts annoying. If Google pulls this off, I might just get on the bandwagon. Everything under one account. =D
Hi there Barry!
thanks for the mention.
Great post. Google has certainly been rolling out some interesting products as of late.
Buzz is impressive. Like Per (above) I am not a tweeter, but Google Buzz appeals to me.
So the question is, do we leave the internet to Google? There is convenience for sure in everything being under Google. But should we give them that power?
I don’t know.
As far as the LBC, I definitely agree that Google Local has been a rocky ride so far. Google no doubt needs time to develop a consistent approach to local ranking and fine tune it. Unfortunately it seems to me that, while it is trying to find its way, small businesses are suffering because of its constantly changing and unclear system.
I really wish Google would focus on search! They are trying to “be” too much, focus on what they know and are good at.
I gave Buzz a try and yes it does have the feel of twitter but looks like it could shape its self better – Ive always had a listing on Local business center but have never felt that the results were what thery should be with lots of spam sites listing so that your business falls to the back – i think that the results should pay closer attention to the web search results.
I gave it a try, but didnt like it :/