How Google Buzz is Disruptive: Open Data Standards
Google rolled out a social stream service today called Buzz. It looks on the surface like Facebook, FriendFeed and other stream reading and writing services. It will compete with Facebook and Twitter. Under the covers, though, this major product was built by a team of people taking a radical new approach to online publishing: Buzz is all about open, standardized user data.
Google Buzz data can be syndicated out to other services using the standard data formats called Atom, Activity Streams, MediaRSS and PubSubHubbub. That couldn't be more different from Facebook. Google has taken open data standards to battle against a marketplace of competitors that are closed and proprietary to varying degrees. This is a very big deal.
Google Buzz was presented as a destination site, but a look at its APIs and developer roadmap indicate that it may actually intend to be a platform - the central hub for a world of distributed social networking. "This is a downpayment on where we're going with the open, social web," Google Open Web Advocate Chris Messina told us.
It's tempting to recoil at the thought of Google powering one more part of our lives online, and our friends' activity streams are a very important part of the online experience now. But if the growing number of data portability and open web advocates the company has hired can do their jobs well - then Google Buzz could be a big force for good.
People will build services on top of analyzing your public Buzz activity. They will build new applications for publishing to Buzz, just like the Twitter ecosystem has today. Planned support for things like the Salmon commenting standard mean that comments left on Buzz could appear out on blog posts around the web, and comments on blog posts could be viewed inside of Buzz when the post links are shared.
The use of full email addresses in @ public replies demonstrated today seems to indicate that it will be a cross-platform messaging service. Facebook users can only message other Facebook users but Buzz users may be able to reply to people using email IDs from other networks. That's hot stuff.
Once Activity Streams consumption, @ messages that look like Webfinger profiles to me and Salmon are in place then Buzz users should be able to read, comment on and message to conversations with people who have never seen Buzz in their lives, simply by subscribing to their feeds. There's huge potential for interoperability here.
Facebook and Twitter will face renewed pressure to publish and consume standardized data feeds as well now. If Buzz is big enough, it could break the dam holding back a flood of standardized data. Where there is standized data, there is scalable network effects, consumer choice, competition and thus innovation.
Buzz's embrace of the open web could make it a very important player in the development of the future.
Update: One critique to take into consideration is this. Google has scooped up a substantial number of formerly independent open web advocates - most recently Chris Messina, who was the leading spokesperson for the Activity Streams standard. See How Chris Messina Got a Job at Google. In that article we included the following argument from Yahoo's Eran Hammer-Lahav, the best-known technologist working to develop and support open login standard OAuth. This perspective is important to consider in thinking about the Buzz announcement and standards.
"This is clearly a big win for Google," Hammer-Lahav told us.
"Messina and Smarr are huge assets in the social web space. My concern is specific to Google. With Messina, Smarr, [inventor of OpenID and more Brad] Fitzpatrick and others all working for Google, focusing on the Social Web, there is less and less incentive for Google to reach out. Google has a strong coding culture which puts running code ahead of consensus and collaboration. Now with so many bright minds in house, they are even less likely to reach out. A week ago, you would have to get at least Google, Plaxo, and Messina (representing the independent voice) to collaborate. This week it's just Google."While I am certain that Messina and Smarr will keep their independent voices, and am not suggesting they will 'sell out' or alter their principles, they no longer need to surface many of their ideas out to the community. They can just have an quick internal meeting and ship products."
Is Google centralizing too much of the decision making about the future of an ostensibly decentralized web? Time will tell, but this may be the heart of the battle for the future of the social web.
If you would like to learn more about the real-time Web, check out our premium report, The Real-Time Web and its Future, to give you a jump-start in this new direction the Web is moving in.
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Love this part;
"Google Buzz data can be syndicated out to other services using the standard data formats called Atom, Activity Streams, MediaRSS and PubSubHubbub..."
Sincere thank you to the decision makers at Google and congratulations to Chris Messina!
would be nice to see the open social web take hold
Marshall,
Your whole article is based on incorrect assumptions. Just like Facebook, Twitter, this is a Gmail silo. This is strict answer to Upcoming facebook e-mail. Communicate from one e-mail client to another e-mail client is not a social networking just plain e-mail. There is no way to add followers and followed by others anonymously i.e the social network is specific to Google Gmail. Sorry man they are just using open standards to suck you in or make you stay within thier Gmail system.
i kind of feel burned by the hype re: wave, but the buzz re: buzz seems valid. i will be paying close attention
@sampur
Here's public access to Buzz, note RSS button, no Gmail required.
http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/109581870574956225297/public/posted
And you'll be able to add people without using Gmail, soon!
Here's public access to Buzz, note RSS button, no Gmail required.
I just wish someone at Google would step back and take control of unifying all the Google services. There's starting to be a lot of overlap and confusing terminology. Feels a lot like the road Microsoft ended up on at one point, and no one wants that.
For example, why does Chrome sync bookmarks to Google Docs instead of the Google Bookmarks property? The last thing Google needs is hundreds of properties and internal dev groups fighting over territory. The vision is starting to feel fragmented.
@Todd Barnard
Here is what Google says about social graph.
"
Adding new sites to Google Buzz
The association between a public feed and a Buzz user relies on the Social Graph API to verify that the Buzz user is the owner of the feed. This relationship is known as a bi-directional claim, and it must be established before new external feeds are added to a Google Buzz account.
Adding a site to your Google profile
New external sites can be claimed by editing your Google profile. If the site does not appear in the My Links or Add Links columns, please Add A Custom URL to claim a new site."
This is highly google centric in IMO - You can't host your own site without being part of google eco-system. Atleast that's what I gather
@sampur
"Comin soon - Over the next several months Google Buzz will introduce an API for developers, including full/read write support for posts with the Atom Publishing Protocol, rich activity notification with Activity Streams, delegated authorization with OAuth, federated comments and activities with Salmon, distributed profile and contact information with WebFinger, and much, much more."
http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/documentation/#coming-soon
Take a deep breath, everything will be alright.
Come find me at SXSW next month, let me buy you a beer, and we can discuss it.
:)
So what's so new about this? I've been buzzed since I was 21...
http://www.techwankers.com/2010/02/09/breaking-news-revolutionary-new-web-application-techwankers-buzz-2-0/
Open Data Standards ? Take another look to the technologies they are pushing. Can we really say that Google is disruptive using these data formats ? These are common data formats used in all major APIs delivering real time messages. It would have been disruptive if google had pushed W3C standards for sharing data (Semantic web technologies, LinkedData, ...). But does Google really want to push semantic web technologies, making the web easier to search ? Once again, I don't see any disruptive technology in Buzz API.
rel="me" link format is disruptive :)
I couldn't have been more surprised when Google's Buzz message popped up when I signed in to my g mail account. Talk about presumptuous.... just because I have a free email account with them, why in the heck would I want to be any further involved with other things they might have to offer. I hate these social networking sites. My life is quite full and busy without any more superfluous crud!! No, no, no, no!
do we really need another version of facebook?
soon we'll be spending all our time updating our various web account with google, facebook, twitter, etc instead of actually TALKING to our friends...
well in a couple of years to come there will be something bigger and better but i keep hearing this talk that there is a new site that will give http://www.craigslist.org close runnings http://www.halfpages.com/ the tale is it is bigger and better.
With it's huge user base it is bound to have some traction but I don't see a Facebook killer here, Open standards friendly or not. Frankly I tried it and just went yawnn, to elaborated concept on wave and to "me to" concept on this one.
i kind of feel burned by the hype re: wave, but the buzz re: buzz seems valid. i will be paying close attention.
http://www.trogrenci.com
With it's huge user base it is bound to have some traction but I don't see a Facebook killer here, Open standards friendly or not. Frankly I tried it and just went yawnn, to elaborated concept on wave and to "me to" concept on this one.
It could be a good app but the social media is getting pretty crowded as it is. There are too many to keep track of already.
Yes Google is trying to become the new Microsoft and I try to buy competing products from them to keep competition going. I do not want to have the one source provides all mentality.
its is disruptive using these data formats ? These are common data formats used in all major projected.
Frankly I tried it and just went yawnn, to elaborated concept on wave and to "me to" concept on this one.