Webmetricsguru is Marshall Sponder, ed
Been on my mind to share what I'm feeling about Google Buzz, but I wanted to play Buzz a little first, and also see what everyone else is saying about Google Buzz, then, use Social Media Monitoring tools I have at my disposal to tell you what the world feels and thinks about Google's Buzz, based on my own interpretation of the data.
But I want to say something first - with this latest set of changes from Google and Facebook I feel both are more aggressively engaging in Social Engineering on the online population (in quest for more more advertising dollars) and I'm annoyed by it.
I'm annoyed at seeing a lot more RSS feeds in Google Reader beyond what I ever selected, since Google Buzz went live - like I'm getting all the feeds of my followers, at times, even though I choose what I like to read with care - it's like Google is saying .... and I'm getting all kinds of messages in my email that are coming from Buzz - some of it is OK - but the upshot is that I'm losing control over what I am seeing - because Google decided it wanted me and you to be part of their next experiment - that's the part of the price of "free".
Here's a recent video parody of Google Buzz to lighten things up a bit.
Facebook did the same thing with Privacy settings a few months ago - and many people were pissed and still are- they haven't left Facebook yet - I mean, where else are most of us going to go?
Anyway, of all the posts I've read this week, Skeptic Geek's commentary stayed with me the most - Google Buzz + Reader + Twitter + Facebook = Noise
My point being - we already have a lot of content to process everyday -yet Google and Facebook want more content - more places to run Ads against for more $$$$$$$. Hey, Google isn't against content mills like Demand Studios - so why would they be against 10x more stuff to monetize?
See ... it's not about us anymore, it's about what Google and Facebook want - and I'm annoyed - but not enough to stop using either.
Now to the monitoring of Buzz - we know from my series of posts about how Social Media Monitoring tools covered Social Media Week in NYC - that it's hodge podge - every platform is going to tell you something different - it's best to choose one platform and hold your breath - or multiple platforms when you need capabilities that one platform has the others don't.
BUT ... never, never, never ... I repeat - never use different platforms to show overlapping data - if your going to use Radian6 for Sentiment - don't use Sysomos for the same thing in the same report - or vice versa... otherwise your readers are going to question the validity of whole report.
And, maybe, people should question the validity of such a report as social media metrics are often "soft" anyway, but if they do - you have lost a bit of creditability - and believe me ... you don't want to lose creditability. None of the platforms today, are interoperable - and "Truth" is in the eyes of the beholder.
Using Sysomos Map I learned something right off the bat that I didn't know - you can turn off Google Buzz with a button at the bottom of the Gmail window -
Anyway, I'm collecting everything I use in this post in an Excel spreadsheet you can download at the end of this post if you want to examine my data, yourself. If you can come up with something better with it - go for it.
Of those who care about User Privacy (see below)
Sysomos Map says the overall sentiment is about 86% Favorable to Google Buzz overall, and a stronger positive for those who care about privacy - but we really don't know what that means - and honestly- only 44% is considered positive, so there's almost as much "neutral" sentiment (if you believe any of this) than anything positive - plus the 14% negative is a lot actually - but it's more important to see if it fluctuates in the next few weeks - if it gets worse then Google has a bigger problem - a "Buzzing problem" that bee spray won't fix.
A lot of time wordmaps don't do anything for me - and I was telling a new friend about it yesterday - that when designers and programmers create stuff - often it's not what the user really wants.
Below is the overall graph about Google Buzz
And here's the Buzz Graph of those who care about User Security specifically.
But this time, the word maps, or Buzz Graphs that Sysomos Map produced made sense - why? because I have read a bit about Google Buzz this week and the map pinpoints what many people have said - there are major concerns about user privacy.
But what Sysomos does that's different than the other platforms I've worked with is it can create a "segmentation" - which is analogous to Web Analytics - to some extent, my friends at KeenKong.com are also able to create a segmentation on incoming twitter and facebook messages - and I will devote a future post to KeenKong soon - but for now, for overall Social Media Monitoring - Sysomos Map took an approach similar to Web Analytics vendors in using, what I believe is N-Cube computation .
Let's say I just want to look at people who are taking about User Privacy - get the demographics and what they're saying in Social Media and Online News sites - I can - with Sysomos - but I would not be able to segment meaningfully in the other platforms (not the same as Radian6's River of News on a keyword, either - what I'm talking about is an entire segmentation).
I used "sub keywords" and isolated just those who expressed concern of user privacy
Sub Keywords: facebook OR gmail OR launch OR launched OR launching OR privacy OR twitter OR user OR users
21007 blog mentions containing the words above vs. 26,699 total, or about 80% of all the responses in the last 4 days had expressed concerns of user privacy - that's the upshot.
In other words, about 80% of those who bothered to post an opinion about Google Buzz care about User Privacy.
Also, Sysomos Map qualified that about 1/3 of the hourly tweets about Google Buzz are connected to User Security - and the point isn't that this number is right or wrong - it's simply an estimation that makes it easier to confront and work with the data and take some meaningful action from it.
In terms of demographics it's interesting that most of the Buzz about Google Buzz is coming from Men - and I don't really know why that is since Woman have just as much to be concerned about as Men.
By the way, I used Google Insights for Search to show you just how different provide different information (often contradictory) and how you might need to use more than one tool - but you should never information about the same thing in the same report from different platforms - as I mentioned earlier.
In this case, Google Insights for Search says India is the strongest player here in terms of Google Buzz where it's only moderately important to Sysomos Map.
It's a long post and I ought to end it here. My main point is I don't like how Google and Facebook have decided the price of "free" is to socially re-engineer us - in "their image" - especially as both have done things to make online presence less secure.
I guess we'll all be on Google and Facebook's menu, one of these days .. ha ... ok, maybe I'm streching it a little - or maybe, not.
Here's the datafile, btw - Google Buzz Social Media - Marshall Sponder - webmetricsguru dot com
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