Many Changes are Afoot! Yahoo!, Twitter, & Google Buzz Go on the Offensive

ESCONDIDO, Calif., Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Breaking news today shows yet another major development for Yahoo!  To add to the excitement of last week's long-awaited announcement that Yahoo! and Microsoft's Search Alliance had been given regulatory approval (see Titan SEO's Feb 18th article), Yahoo! also formally struck a deal with Twitter.  Now not only will searchers see tweets at the bottom of their search results, they will actually be able to access their Twitter feed from Yahoo! search results as well as Yahoo! Entertainment, Finance, Mail,  and other portals, and have the ability to tweet from those locations.  This arrangement will be a significant advantage to both Yahoo! and Twitter users and will help the new Yahoo!-Microsoft agreement to gain ground against Google's increasingly integrated system.

Google, on the other hand, has already enjoyed a stellar debut from its new social networking baby, Buzz (see Titan SEO's Feb 12th article, "What's the Buzz? Google's Latest Platform to Outperform Twitter").  Since its inception on Feb 9th, Buzz has already undergone several changes and improvements, thanks to the loud and clear feedback users sent to Google, much of which was in regards to Buzz' lax privacy policy.  Despite these changes, Buzz' popularity is already beginning to cause the online world to take note.

Since Google launched Buzz earlier this month, and following the many subsequent complaints that Google was not making it clear people had to opt-out of the public nature of their profiles, Google has made several changes to Buzz' default settings.  After just two days of use, Google edited the checkbox allowing the list of followers to become public by making it "more prominent" so people will have an easier time seeing it in the first place.  They also made it possible to "block" followers or "unfollow" people, and have set it up so users will clearly identify their contacts who do not have a public profile.

After just four days of use, Buzz was further altered by having one of its major selling features, auto-following, downgraded to "auto-suggesting."  When someone creates a profile for the first time, Buzz will generate a suggested contacts list with a check box next to each contact.  The user will then click the button that says "follow selected people and start using Buzz."  In addition to the removal of auto-following, Buzz no longer auto-connects users' public Picasa albums and Google Reader shared items, which it was previously set to do.  Another change includes a "Buzz" tab on Gmail which will allow the user to hide Buzz emails from Gmail or disable it altogether; there is also a link to accomplish this task on the set-up page.

A final change to look for:  people using Buzz before the Feb 11th update will soon be given a chance to experience the new start-up process in the coming weeks to better determine whether their contact lists should be public or private.

How has all this controversy affected Buzz' popularity?  Just two days after Buzz' birth, it was already generating 55 posts per second, based on data from an early blog post.  Compared to Facebook (700 status updates per second) and Twitter (600 tweets per second), this is pocket change.  However, keeping in mind that both Facebook and Buzz offer many more actions for users than just a single "post," "tweet," or "status update," it is likely these social networking sites see a lot more activity than the numbers indicate, whereas Twitter does not.  Furthermore, although Facebook takes the cake on sheer volume at the moment, it is possible users may eventually migrate to Google's highly integrated complex of services (email, chat, photo sharing, social networking, and more).  Given Google's near monopoly on search activity of 34,000 searches per second, compared to Yahoo's 3,200 searches per second and Bing's 927 searches per second (see Matt McGee's By the Numbers article), it is not hard to foresee a time when loyal Google users will want to combine all their online activity in one convenient location.

It is for just this reason that Yahoo!, acting in the new Search Alliance with Microsoft, went on the offensive to capture as much of the market share as possible.  For the typical Buzz or Twitter user, or someone considering using these platforms to promote a business, this is good news.  Google has made Buzz easier and more secure for the end-user, and has shown a quick commitment in responding to users' concerns.  Yahoo! is allowing real-time and convenient access to Twitter.  According to Mike Tretinjak of Titan SEO, "this means for all the companies on the Facebook bandwagon, there is now more reason than ever to make Buzz and Twitter the next logical choice for online marketing."

Contributed by Amanda Finch, VP Operations, Titan SEO, Inc.

CONTACT:  Titan SEO, 1-800-658-7511, [email protected]

SOURCE Titan SEO