Apple’s iPhone to Save Google Buzz?

Friday, February 12, 2010

IMG_0073-200x300 It may work out that in a week with the internet abuzz with Google Buzz bashing over privacy issues, that Apple may inadvertently save Google´s newest offering. Especially since most smart phones including 20 percent of Android phones can’t offer the same coupling of Buzz to Maps as the iPhone does.

I have been scanning the internet for days without hearing a single media outlet standing up for Google´s newest creation. Most news services, in fact, are referring to it as a creation out of Dr. Frankenstein´s lab. Some odd mix of Twitter and Facebook with a complete disregard for people´s privacy that has already forced Google to roll out some major tweaks, if such a thing as a major tweak can exist. Why all the worry? Simple, Google has merged two things completely different Buzz (public) with Gmail(private). There are a number of horror stories already posted around the web, including this one from today´s Washington Post.

buzzformobile Why do I suggest that Apple might save Google Buzz? Apple by all industry analysis will sell millions more GPS and map equipped phones in the coming year, and as of right now the Apple OS is Buzz’s best interface with location services and Maps.

Buzz offers something neither Facebook nor Twitter as of right now can compete with, posting with location services. This media fire storm will die down shortly as Google rushes to put out the fires of its initial launch mistakes, and people will rush to give it another chance.

If it is not being used in conjunction with a smart phone, I can’t really comprehend the point of a new social networking tool like Buzz. By itself, I find it intrusive. I want my professional life separate from my personal life, and will probably never use it on either my desktop or my laptop. But on a GPS equipped smart phone it is a sexy addition to life.

I should point out it also scares the hell out of me. I know I will accidentally respond to someone’s buzz a few blocks away from the barstool I’m sitting at when I remember that I had told my girlfriend I was still at the office. That’s not going to work anymore as my location will be tied to my buzzing and the lie will fall apart like a three day old fairground fish. Yet, the inclusion of a tweeting (buzzing) with a location on a map is fantastic. Someone who has extra tickets to a sold out concert could simply announce it from their local bar and match their ticket with a fan, traffic jams and accidents can be avoided, lost children found, artists who surprisingly show up to jam with other acts can announce it, booked restaurants can let people know of last minute cancellations, the possibilities are endless.

I think what Google is trying to do is show us what we are missing within blocks of where we are. The Buzz, if you will, is a way of actually sharing the world around you. Imagine waiting for your friends and checking out what was being said. This is not done in a vacuum, but right there in your Maps app. By selecting a recent Buzz just a block away you might get treated to something you would not otherwise have seen, by someone you do not know. I remember in the weeks before Frank Zappa’s death I was lucky enough to see him playing guitar on the street with Carlos Santana. Two of the greatest guitarists of a generation in one’s final public performance before his death playing on the street for free. With a simple Buzz, accompanied by video or photos I would have had hundreds more enjoying this impromptu moment with me.

Or, and I doubt this would ever happen but, a woman posts a photo of herself saying, “Bored, looking to meet someone new, who loves Tom Waits, and wants to buy me a drink” and I say to myself I love Tom Waits, drinks, and I’m only 400 yards away.

More realistically, if I read an art gallery opening in the newspaper I probably didn’t get to0 excited, but if someone were to post a photo of the actual exhibit and I’m mere blocks away I might attend.

I’m not going to touch it until Google gets its s%$t together. I resent that all of these people I email, mostly for work, were immediately asked to follow me and that my Google Reader was linked by default to something I didn’t ask for BUT I’ll be back when my anger subsides.

Or I’ll be missing the buzz.

This is an article by The Apps Machine.