Google Buzz- “Go beyond status messages, share updates, photos, videos, and more. Start conversations about the things you find interesting” These is Google Buzz, a social networking tool like Facebook and Twitter. But after it’s lunched on February 9, 2010, many Google users raised their concerns about their privacy on the said network.
Here’s the latest news from the BBC about the controversial social network:
Google has admitted to BBC News that testing of its controversial social network Buzz was insufficient.
The firm has had to make a series of changes to the service after a ferocious backlash from users concerned about intrusions of privacy.
The BBC understands that Buzz was only tested internally and bypassed more extensive trials with external testers – used for many other Google services.
Google said that it was now working “extremely hard” to fix the problems.
“We’re very early in this space. This was one of our first big attempts,” Todd Jackson, Buzz product manager, told BBC News.
“We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild.”
Many of the firm’s new services are tested by the so-called Google Trusted Tester program, a network of friends and family of Google employees who are given confidential access to products before they launch.
Buzz was not tested by this program.
The firm has now set up a “war room” at Google HQ to bring together engineers and product managers to make decisions about what changes need to be made to Buzz.
“If it becomes clear that people don’t think we’ve done enough, we’ll make more changes,” said Mr Jackson.
He acknowledged that many of the networks “tens of millions” of users were “rightfully upset” and that the firm was “very, very sorry”.
“We know we need to improve things.”
Privacy priorities
Buzz was launched on 9 February. The service, which is integrated with Gmail, allows users to post status updates, share content and read and comment on friends’ posts.
One problem that immediately caused concern was Google’s decision to automatically give users a ready-made circle of friends based on the people they most frequently e-mailed.
Facebook page
The launch was widely seen as a challenge to Facebook
Unless users changed settings in their profile, this list could automatically be made public, allowing anyone to see who a user corresponded with most frequently.
Mr Jackson told BBC News that the decision to create these automatic lists was borne out of the idea that Google “wanted to provide a great user experience straight out of the box”.
But privacy experts immediately pointed out this could cause problems for journalists, businesses or even people having an illicit affair.
Evgeny Morozov, a Belarus-born researcher and blogger who looks at the political implications of the internet, also raised concerns.
“If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government,” he wrote
As a result of complaints, Google said Buzz would now only suggest people who a user might want to be friends with.
The company has also announced steps to make it easier to disable Buzz altogether and to ensure that people’s accounts do not automatically connect with online Picasa photo albums and items that people may store in their Google Reader accounts.
The changes were in part thrashed out at a company-wide meeting on 12 February at Google headquarters.
“We realize that we didn’t get things quite right – we’re working extremely hard to fix this,” said Mr Jackson.
He said that “transparency and control” were “top priorities” and that users would “continue to see improvements”.
Code challenge
Other possible changes include a better “preferences menu” that will allow users to better tailor what appears in their inbox, and a more prominent “mute” option to switch the service off.
Another idea, said Mr Jackson, was to create a separate service that was not part of Gmail.
“We think that integration with Gmail was absolutely the right way to go – we wanted to make Buzz easily accessible to people,” he said.
“We also want to give people who don’t use Gmail the ability to use Buzz, so we’re exploring the idea of offering a separate destination site.”
The most recently announced changes would go live “this week”, he added.
“We worked around the clock to make the code changes for these improvements; now we’re putting them through a full testing process to identify any bugs and translating them into 53 languages so they reach all Gmail users.”
Asked if the Google founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – or any of the executive team would issue an apology for breaching their user’s trust, a Google spokesperson said: “Google has apologised – we’re very sorry for the concern we caused.”
The trends in search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) will force marketers to adapt online options for their companies. SEO experts are being risk-aversive to the “black swan” phenomenon. This term is used to describe events that end an online marketing effort in one swoop.
Creating of aggressive new keywords for 2010 is one of the best and first thing you have to do in 2010. This will allow search engines to find untouchable search targets. Today, Bing—with its pending deal with Yahoo—is set to have a good year.
Many companies are contracting search engine optimization (SEO) companies to strengthen their online presence. If you’re a company that aspires to do greater things online, SEO is a great option. But it is also a tool for the blogger, who just wants to make some money on the side.
Granted, you will not be able to launch a more extensive SEO campaign compared to companies that have the budget to do so. But there are tools that are readily available on the Web that allow you to conduct and monitor your SEO efforts properly.
The search engine algorithms are dynamic—they change from week to week. That’s why you should keep a close eye on your SEO campaign.
The first tool you should use is Google Analytics.
Google offers many tools that every website can use in order to track the progress of its online exposure. Analytics shows the amount of traffic coming into the site and also reveals where users found the site and what pages do they go to.
The tool also allows you to set goals and allows you to track conversion rates. And most importantly, Google Analytics shows you what keywords users typed in to find your site.
Another step towards a good SEO campaign is testing the competition. This simply means that you should look for your site through other search engines and look for your competitor’s sites as well. This process will also unveil what keywords your competitor uses; and if it can be applied to your site, use it! That’s if they’re performing better than your site.
The last step, is to invest more time and effort. Read books, participate in forums. Simply said, exhaust the information available. There are many ways to boost your site’s rankings. All you have to do is search and learn.
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Another week was done and lots of work also finished. Well, this past days we’ve been attacked by a terrible typhoon named “Ondoy” and it’s really scary.
Strong winds and heavy rain covered the entire Metro Manila. There are also flush floods and land slides. It’s feels bad because there are may people who died on that disaster.
It also feels lucky because my place where I live is not one of the areas who’s been affected by the typhoon.
Thanks God! for that. And I pray for those who suffered by the disaster.
After that it’s going to get back and work again. Last week I worked with Toys Wholesale, create articles, links, and DIRs. This toyswholesale.com.au/ is really hard to rank specially the keyword “Toy”. But I’m still working on it, although I paused it this week to see the effects of what I have done before. And I’m looking forward to see it’s rank with the next few weeks.
After Toys Wholesale, I’m now starting to work with Chiquel http://www.chiquel.com.au/. Chiquel offers services and sales with Wigs. Wigs to transform your hair. Collection of wigs, hairpieces, extensions and products from fashion capital Paris, Germany, London, New York, Tokyo and Milan.
I’m now starting to check it’s backlinks and preparing what link strategy I’m going to do with it. And I’m also starting to create Articles with Chiquel. Hope it will works out well.
