22 April 2010 | Author: J. Morton News Editor
Google Buzz - a swipe toward other web heavy-hitters Facebook and Twitter - launched earlier this year as a ready-to-go attachment to Gmail, but the search guru has now upped the ante by integrating it into its widely used maps service.
Buzz, released in February, arrived much to the apathy of critics and users, who said there wasn't much new to the service.
"Google has taken a smattering of good ideas from a number of popular services and attempted to combine them in a way that meshes well with the Gmail experience," Ryan Paul wrote at the time for Ars Technica. "The end result is a service that shows promise but lacks the requisite killer feature or innovative twist that it will need in order to truly keep people engaged."
Could the new map integration feature - also available for mobile users - be that twist?
Google has taken its social media ventures to a new level by integrating Buzz, along with posts from Twitter and mobile uploads, into maps that place the users at the location they were in when they submitted status updates, microblogs and other information.
The map extension allows users to alert the virtual world as to not only what's on their mind - through the service's standard status/microblogging function and Twitter collation - but also share their global position as well.
By selecting the 'more' option within any given Google Map result, then ticking 'Buzz', curious users can find out exactly what - and who - is at a particular location.
"Find an interesting area like your neighborhood and select any available icon to see what's going on there," Ana Ulian and Evan Parker co-wrote in an official Google blog posting. "In the post's window, click on the name to see the author's public profile, the timestamp to comment on the post, or the place to see it in Maps
While it will certainly be railed against by proponents of web privacy, the feature does, however, imbue Google's social media arm with something other services, such as Twitter and Facebook, do not have. But the question remains: Will users be keen to give up exactly where they are at any given moment?
Maps go social with Google's Buzz
Google Buzz - a swipe toward other web heavy-hitters Facebook and Twitter - launched earlier this year as a ready-to-go attachment to Gmail, but the search guru has now upped the ante by integrating it into its widely used maps service.Buzz, released in February, arrived much to the apathy of critics and users, who said there wasn't much new to the service.
"Google has taken a smattering of good ideas from a number of popular services and attempted to combine them in a way that meshes well with the Gmail experience," Ryan Paul wrote at the time for Ars Technica. "The end result is a service that shows promise but lacks the requisite killer feature or innovative twist that it will need in order to truly keep people engaged."
Could the new map integration feature - also available for mobile users - be that twist?
Google has taken its social media ventures to a new level by integrating Buzz, along with posts from Twitter and mobile uploads, into maps that place the users at the location they were in when they submitted status updates, microblogs and other information.
The map extension allows users to alert the virtual world as to not only what's on their mind - through the service's standard status/microblogging function and Twitter collation - but also share their global position as well.
By selecting the 'more' option within any given Google Map result, then ticking 'Buzz', curious users can find out exactly what - and who - is at a particular location.
"Find an interesting area like your neighborhood and select any available icon to see what's going on there," Ana Ulian and Evan Parker co-wrote in an official Google blog posting. "In the post's window, click on the name to see the author's public profile, the timestamp to comment on the post, or the place to see it in Maps
While it will certainly be railed against by proponents of web privacy, the feature does, however, imbue Google's social media arm with something other services, such as Twitter and Facebook, do not have. But the question remains: Will users be keen to give up exactly where they are at any given moment?
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