Google Buzz Blogging Is Real Real-Time

I’ve been advocating Google Buzz as a blogging platform since its start early last month and posted a general example of a Buzz Blog about two weeks ago. After writing my first true Buzz Blog post yesterday, a review of the iPhone Buzz client Buzzie, I am even more convinced that Buzz is a powerful, real-time blogging platform.

For most people, I think the best way to get thoughts, shares and ideas noticed is to put them directly in front of the largest number of people in the places where they spend the most time. Today those places are the feeds at Facebook, Twitter and now Google Buzz — The Big Three. I should note that private posts in a Facebook feed are invisible to Google and don’t have as much value as public posts.  I use a Facebook Page, which Pages are now indexed by Google in real-time.

I will not argue that the traditional blog or that RSS is dead, just that people should be exposed to your thoughts, shares and ideas where the people already congregate.  The more influential folks can still elicit that crucial mouse-click to their respective blog sites, but for everyone else the best opportunity for exposure is in the feeds of The Big Three. I’ve previously laid out the reasons why I think Buzz is The Superior Sharing Network.

The ideal Buzz Blog should be less than about 800 characters — any more than that collapses the Buzz formatted text field into about four lines of plain text. Don’t expect folks to make that one extra click to expand and reveal your writing — format your Buzz Blog to appear in its entirety. See my quick primer on Buzz Blogging at Buzz. If you’ve spent the past few years distilling your thoughts into 140 characters tweets, don’t think of Buzz as a way to say the same thing in 800 characters.  A Buzz Blog requires the same economy with words, you just have room to say more. A Buzz Blog can be spontaneous, but should still be edited as carefully as a traditional blog post.

When I read that the first iPhone Buzz app was released yesterday, Buzzie [iTunes link], I immediately saw the opportunity for a Buzz Blog. I bought the app, went through each page, grabbed screenshots, explored its functionality and compared Buzzie to the Mobile Safari interface for Buzz. I could have written a blog post here, but expecting folks to click through and read it was simply too much to ask. I figured that putting a quick review with pictures right in front of my Buzz friends was likely to get more attention.

I think it worked.  I not only received Likes for the Buzzie Buzz Blog post, but a discussion emerged. I’ve only been blogging for about a year and have had very few discussions and comments here at starnes.com.

It’s great if your new blog post notifications are now broadcast in real-time across your social networks, but Google Buzz offers the opportunity to bring your thoughts, shares and ideas directly to the people.  Such a strategy, in my opinion, is more effective than trying to bring the people to your blog.

Finally, as I was thinking about how I would express my own thoughts this morning regarding Buzz Blogging, I came across this Buzz Blog post from DeWitt Clinton, who has quickly become Google’s thoughtful, intelligent voice on Buzz:

Buzz has reminded me how much I enjoy blogging.

In the year since my last actual blog post, I’ve sent several hundred Twitter messages, posted over a thousand comments on FriendFeed, and left several dozen or so comments on Facebook, Disqus, Blogger, and elsewhere. But no blog posts.

Yet since Buzz launched less than a month ago I’ve written 47 updates here, each one of them essentially a blog post in itself, averaging 208 words per update. That’s more than one post a day, which is far more than I ever wrote on my blog.

I’m not exactly sure why I post so much long-form content on Buzz, especially after I effectively abandoned my old site.

But I am doing it, so Buzz is obviously doing something right

Google _is_ doing something right with *Buzz* and I like it.

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Take Control of Facebook Game Applications | Update #3

Updated March 1, 2010. This blog writing was originally published in December of last year and now reflects changes to Facebook’s user interface since then.

Despite the below information being widely distributed across the internet and residing within Facebook itself, I still come across folks on social networks, almost daily, who complain about Facebook game apps. Some even say they may quit Facebook because of the app messages in their Feed. This writing represents my effort to promote harmony between those who are annoyed by Facebook game apps and those who enjoy them.

It should be noted that today, March 1, Facebook officially ended app notifications.  Your Feed will still display app messages unless you filter or block them, but you should no longer receive notifications in your Notifications Tab.  This tab sits in the upper left-hand area of your Facebook and shows red numbers over an Earth icon.  If you’re still getting app notifications and don’t want to wait for your Facebook to get the new feature, simply click the Notifications Earth icon, scroll to the bottom and click See All Notifications and in the right column uncheck the apps you want to silence.  Apps you block using the methods explained below will also be blocked from sending notifications.

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Imagine if you could selectively block your friend or mate from saying anything that annoys you.  What if you could press a few buttons and keep an old flame out of your business?  Unlike relationships in the meatspace, Facebook does provide such tools which allow almost absolute control over what you see and what sees you on Facebook.  But if you desire absolute privacy, don’t put private information on the Internet.

You may not like Facebook games, aka apps, but your best friend may have just reached Level 32 on Farmville and may be flooding your Feed with updates and messages.  While these Feed messages may be worthless, nauseating, space-filling noise to you, they’re likely important to your friend.  For many apps, these messages alert other players to special prizes or rewards.

In addition to the Feed updates, Facebook game apps do another thing that may alarm you — they access certain information from you, even if you have not authorized the respective app.  That’s right, games your Facebook friends are playing have the ability to access your information, even if you are not playing.

According to Facebook:

All applications must respect existing privacy settings. For example, if an application creates a slideshow of your photo albums, and a certain album is set to “Only My Friends”, it may only display that slideshow to your friends.

Simply put, Facebook says they will not break your own privacy settings.  If your friend can see your relationship status, the app he/she joins can also see that status.

Take Control

1. Hide The App In Your Feeds.

This is simple.  Just find a message from the offending app in your Live Feed or News Feed, hover your cursor in the right column and click Hide. All future messages from that app will not appear in your Feeds.

hidefacebookapp

To un-hide the app or see what apps you have hidden, go to your Top News Feed and scroll to the bottom of the page and click Edit Options.

2. Block The App At Its Source.

If you want to keep an app from accessing your information and from sending you invitations, you can go directly to the specific app and block it. Go to the Facebook Search field at the top of any Facebook page and enter the name of the app. In the search results, be sure you choose the game’s Application Page and not the game’s Fan Page — it will be labeled as an application in the search results.

blockfacebookapplication

From the Application Page

blockfacebookapp2-1

Dialog Box After Clicking "Block Application"

To view the apps you may have blocked, go the top right of your Facebook page and click the Account menu, then choose Privacy, then select Applications and Websites, then Blocked Applications. At this settings window you can also unblock Facebook apps.

Here is what that window looks like:

Facebook Privacy Blocked Apps

3. Block Specific Friends From Sending App Invites.

To block specific friends from sending app invites, go to the Account menu at the top right of your Facebook page, then choose Privacy, then select Applications and Websites, then Ignore Application Invites.

Enter in the offending friend’s name and your peace is restored.

Here is what that window looks like:

Facebook Blocked Invites

4. Modify What Info Apps Can Access.

This step will apply to all apps — it literally defines what information Facebook apps can access in your profile.

Back to the Account menu — click it and then choose Privacy, then select Applications and Websites, then What your friends can share about you.

Below is what you should see:

Facebook App Privacy Settings

The above shows my Application Privacy Settings.  I’ve chosen not to share any of the information shown in this list with Facebook apps.  Remember, apps your friends use can access the information checked in the above list, even if you are not using that respective app. Also note that apps will always have access to your publicly available information: “Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages.”

If you wish to keep your information private from all Facebook apps, you basically have to remove all of the Facebook apps you may be using by first going to the Account menu then clicking the Applications option. On this Settings page you can view apps by Recently Used, Bookmarked, Added to Profile, Authorized, Allowed to Post, Granted Additional Permissions and Facebook Prototypes.

Authorized Apps is a good place to start cleaning up what is likely a surprising number of accumulated apps.  If you are on a determined mission to tidy up your current apps list, be careful you don’t remove an app you may be using!

When I first wrote this article I played many Facebook games, so I don’t mean to show any bias against the games used as examples above.  Farmville was actually one of my favorites.  For me, some of these games offered simple brain decompression after a hectic day.  My eighty year-old Grandfather still plays Farmville and I remain sensitive to letting the gaming folks enjoy themselves.

In a community now consisting of hundreds of millions of users, Facebook is wildly diverse.  Some folks like to use Facebook in different ways than you use it. Facebook has provided the tools to block what you don’t want to see and protect the information you’d like to try to keep private.  It’s up to you to apply these tools and create your own ideal Facebook experience, while letting other folks create theirs.

Note: Skitch for OS X used above for the screen captures and notations.  I think it’s a great OS X app.

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Google Buzz: The Superior Sharing Network

Content is everything across social media and unless you’re a very influential person, it’s going to take more than a string of plain text to inspire folks to look at what you have to say.

Sharing well-crafted, media-rich posts in the places where people gather is an effective way to find others who share your interests — just don’t expect them to click to uncover your message. Complete posts which can be viewed in a stream offer the best chance for your shared items to be discovered. Today, most folks are convening on Twitter, Facebook and now Google Buzz.

This writing will examine the content sharing capabilities of The Big Three social networks — I’ve also included FriendFeed because it offers an excellent example of properly executed sharing features and very nice content presentation.  I will not delve into any other issues regarding these networks.  The way shared content looks, what information can be conveyed and ease of posting said content is the focus.

Each of the below examples shows my best effort to share the same content on each of the four subject networks.  The content consists of four photos, descriptions and some commentary.

Twitter

Click to link to tweet.

Twitter offers 140 characters of text to express your thoughts or share a link – wonderfully simple. Many folks also use Twitter for conversation, but I’ve mostly used it as a place to share links of things in which I’m interested.

The difficulty with Twitter is getting your 140 characters to stand out.

Tweets can’t display images so I’ve linked my images back to FriendFeed where the pictures and some commentary await. Of course, you can’t format Twitter text.

This is obviously the poorest medium for sharing compelling, media-rich content.

Facebook

Click to link to post.

Conventional shared posts to Facebook show just one very small thumbnail.  I needed to create a photo album to share all four photos and only three photos appear below the post.  This was not a quick nor simple task. Also, folks will need to be motivated to click to see more pictures.

I was able to add a brief description in the header text field, but no more than 420 characters will fit and any more than 320 will invoke a See More link — another click. Further descriptive text can be added in the comment fields or as a caption under each photo — I added captions.

There’s no way to format text in Facebook headers or comments.

The Facebook sharing bookmarklet doesn’t offer the ability to insert a text excerpt and only allows one tiny thumbnail, when it works.  You can copy and paste text into the content box that appears after Facebook has processed the shared link.

Facebook posts are ugly.

FriendFeed

Click to link to post.

I think the FriendFeed post looks the best, so far.  There’s enough character space on top to write a decent headline and some descriptive text, but not enough for a micro-blog. There’s no text formatting and no line breaks in FriendFeed. If needed, further descriptive text can be added in the comment fields, but if you’ve got a lot to say you can either break up your writing into many comment fields or create a big lump of words.

Please note that in the original post FriendFeed only displayed two photos, and a click is required to see all four.

FriendFeed offers the best bookmarklet for sharing web content, among the networks presented here.  Grabbing a text excerpt (which is then inserted into a comment field) and pictures is easy and it works.

Google Buzz

Click to link to this Buzz.

Google Buzz gets sharing right with almost 800 visible characters before the text collapses into a summary block and the ability to do simple text formatting — bold, italic and strike-through. And paragraphs.  When sharing a web article the visible text space is ideal for a title, commentary and a text excerpt from the shared article. This is Buzz blogging.

All four pictures display and I’ve tested Buzz up to ten photos, which all display without the need for an extra click.

Click to see full size.

When you upload photos to Buzz they are stored in your Picasa account and enlarge when clicked in your post.  I’ve heard some folks complain about uploaded photos going into Picasa, but I think it’s a feature — I’m glad all my posted photos will be archived.  You can also select photos from your Picasa albums to post.

To add shared content to Buzz you may post content directly from Google Reader, use the Share in Reader bookmarklet, paste a link into the Buzz post field or just input text.  For media-rich posts, I prefer to paste a link into Buzz as it offers the ability to choose pictures and excerpt text more elegantly than the bookmarklet.  It also provides the opportunity to add some text formatting and commentary, the latter being critical to set your post apart from ordinary shares and encourage folks to engage and converse with you.

If you share a lot, want to add value to your shares and want folks to completely and almost effortlessly see what you have to share, I believe Buzz is the best choice.

Of course, the highest impact shares are meaningless if there’s no one to look at them and no one to interact with you, so I’ll defer to Thomas Hawk regarding why Buzz will be a hit.

If you liked this writing or if you disagree, join me on Buzz and let’s talk about it.

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Tagging Rancho Santa Fe With Geo-Graffiti

Last night on Google Buzz my friend and neighbor Sam Afifi suggested that we tag our town with graffiti — high-tech virtual graffiti.  His idea was to use Buzz tags to create a peace symbol around the central village of Rancho Santa Fe, California.  I thought the idea was subtly subversive and agreed.  Below is Sam’s initial drawing of where we would align our Buzz tags.

Sam's initial conceptual drawing.

Luckily, Linea Del Cielo and La Gracia converge at the entrance to the RSF Village creating an ideal base for the peace sign.  The spine of the peace sign begins at the steps of The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe and runs northwest up Paseo Delicias, the main street of RSF.

I did my Buzz tagging with an iPhone and Sam used an HTC phone running the Android OS.  Android was much better suited for this task as Sam was able to overlay the peace symbol on his live Google map, which provided an accurate guide for proper Buzz tag placement. I was left with something closer to dead reckoning using only Sam’s location and a vague familiarity with the peace sign layout.  The HTC battery outperformed the iPhone battery by about two to one, which was not a surprise to me.

Buzz tags were dropped at the place from which we sent a Buzz — tags visible to anyone viewing a Buzz layered Google map of RSF.  After about three hours of tireless Buzzing, we had littered the RSF Village with over two hundred such tags.

We returned to my home to gather and consolidate our data and were distraught to discover that many of our tags had apparently disappeared.  We quickly learned that the Google Buzz map only shows around forty-five tags on the screen at a time.  So Sam and I went through all of the tags and whittled them down to the best thirty-two.  Most of my tags were discarded — many wildly errant.

Sam chose the best tags and the results are shown below at two different zoom levels.

If you’re on a location enabled device and logged into Google Buzz, you can view the Rancho Santa Fe peace sign live by clicking here.

We’re not sure how long these tags will persist, but we had fun making a personal, virtual statement on the community in which we live.

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