A few days back, I read on RWW that Google Wave has released Wave Elements, which allow waves to be embedded on any website. Despite what might seem a ‘never took off’ status, I still thought Wave had potential. Buzz did confuse me in this context, and I wondered about Google’s strategy – whether they’re simultaneously developing the two products for consumer/enterprise users, or using one as a stepping stone for the other etc. My usage of Google Wave was limited to the first few weeks and Buzz faded out in a few days.
My primary issue with Buzz was that rather than new conversations, my contacts mostly had feed imports from Reader, Twitter etc, with little value addition. Buzz never gave me the option of removing specific feeds of users. Also, I couldn’t export the conversation which happened inside Buzz to the blog. The latitude-buzz based ideas remain complicated. All this, in addition to all the criticism that came their way right after the launch. It just made a mess of all my contexts.
But when I implemented the Facebook ‘Like’ button last week, I wondered whether I should implement the ‘Buzz’ button too. Like I’ve said before, I think most offices can’t afford to block GMail, so Buzz might help in the sharing better. 😉 Still thinking about it. Meanwhile, what I did try, is to add Facebook Insights to this domain. I stopped at six ‘Bad Request’ responses. Now, if I have shared my blogs with FB, I can’t see why they can’t make it easier for me to add Insights. They seem to be prompting me for a dozen other things these days!! With all the other plugins, this could really help.
I had hopes on a similar line for Buzz too. Simplistically put, if i shared my blogs with Buzz as a publisher, could they automatically assign a shortened goo.gl url to it, and notify me when it was shared? While at it, also tie it to my Analytics, for even more details.
The thought is pretty simple. Someone ‘likes’ this post, shares it on FB/Buzz, a discussion happens around it, and a reader here might not even know about it. Hell, I might not even know about it, if I haven’t implemented a few tools. Can that be rectified? Also, can FB/Buzz help export the conversations from there and (also) show it on my blog, because it provides the reader an easy way to know different perspectives on the matter, even though discussions have been happening on other platforms, and perhaps even discover people with similar interests. (There is at least one FB comments plugin that pulls comments from Notes, but I was looking at something that would identify the url irrespective of who shared it) I’d say the same for Twitter too, except I don’t think they even have threaded conversations completely right.
until next time, scaling walls
PS. I don’t think Disqus is there.. yet