While the massive amount of content and the storage space required is truly difficult for one to grasp, it is no surprise that YouTube is a superstar in the Google portfolio of brands. This portfolio has taken some bad hits recently with underperforming Google Buzz, Wave, and even the mobile entry Nexus One. Earlier this week, Hitwise even announced that Facebook overtook Google as the most visited website.

What better time to remind everyone that Google has a user engagement superstar in its portfolio.

Recently, Mashable hosted a Web Faceoff Series in which participants were asked to vote for their favorite networking site: Facebook or Twitter. Facebook won 48% to 40% but this was before a new contender was released into the online arena, Google Buzz.

On first glance, Google Buzz may just look like another copy-cat of Twitter, but upon further investigation, you may discover that the Buzz is more like a Twitter-Facebook superhero, combining the strengths of the two, without any of the weaknesses.

Unlike Twitter, Google Buzz is not restricted by the 140 characters that drive so many of us crazy, and like Facebook, links attached to the post will include a summary and image. Photo sharing is made easy by allowing simple incorporation of Flickr and Picasa photos and videos. Like Twitter and Facebook, Buzz is available on mobile, and yes, all of your information can be private or public, as you wish. Of course, the most compelling aspect of Google Buzz is the same as what compels us about Gmail, Gchat, and all things Google: simplicity with very few bugs. Since anybody who is anybody has a Gmail account, it seems logical that this social network will be the one to send Facebook and Twitter into the cyber junkyard of Friendster and MySpace. But that’s up for debate.

As failure-proof as Buzz seems to be, there are some major obstacles it will face. Although Buzz has already overtaken Twitter, it still has to contend with Facebook. According to a poll taken in September 2009 by Nielsen Online, users spent an average of 2 hours a month on Google, which was 3 times less than the time they spent on Facebook. Mashable is also currently taking a poll asking their audience who would win in a fight among Facebook, Twitter, and the Buzz, and the results so far show Facebook as the clear winner. A major issue against Google Buzz, with good reason, has been privacy. Because Google Buzz has access to your entire email contact list, it automatically follows friends you’ve most interacted with. But just because you always email your mom, that doesn’t mean you want her following your Buzz updates. However, Google has been extremely fast in responding to concerns and has outlined ways to privatize your Buzz posts or turn it off completely.

So what’s your opinion on Google Buzz? Below are a few thoughts from the RFI community.

“Google Buzz is seemingly the ultimate and most transparent social network but I can see the issue of hyper- transparency. Some users are uncomfortable with putting it all out there, and for Buzz to be maximized, it needs to know everything from interests to personal contacts.” Megan Levi, Social Media Analyst

“Good to see that Google is jumping into the social networking racket under the radar but launching Buzz the way they did feels slightly sneaky. For instance, before they fixed it they had all of your contacts pre-loaded as your ‘network’. Unfortunately this is made visible to anyone else in your network. That feels like a bit of a violation of my address book, and I was especially pissed off when I saw that everyone had access to my 10-year old’s email address. I figured out how to turn it off but it was a big blunder on Google’s part big time. It even put political dissidents and people in harm’s way.” Scott Schneider, Director of RFI Studios

“Personally, when I update Buzz, it’s a completely different update than Facebook or Twitter. This is going to people I know – and people that I know well. Here I feel I can really tell what’s going on in my life, without feeling like I am over-sharing… it’s not a 1000+ people that I might not even know.” Renee Barone, Senior Interactive Strategist

“Email is the most well-established, ubiquitous, open, and interoperable social networking platform that has ever existed.  With Wave, Voice, and now Buzz, Google is tearing down the walls between historically separate digital/social channels – and melding them into a seamless flow of content and conversation.  Facebook has made recent moves in this direction as well.  And both Google and Facebook are taking a page out of the playbook of the ‘poster’ child of email-powered social media – Posterous.” Tyler Pennock, SVP of Social Media

What must be realized is that this is becoming bigger than ‘search’ and bigger than revenue drivers.  This is not about Bing and Google Search.   This seems like a long-term competition between two giants battling for position as the preferred technology brand for consumers.  Both will use their core business to expand into other areas and it is important to analyze events and success outside of the ‘revenue’ lens.

This is now truly resembling beginnings of a technological Cold War.  Much like in any long-term conflict, it is important view events with the big picture in mind.  This is now a conflict of pre-emptive moves, territorial encroachments, tricky alliances, posturing, and battles for the ‘hearts and minds’ of consumers.

Let’s analyze the situation through the 3 ‘Cold War’ points mentioned above:

Encroachment
Google: Just announced its own browser based operating system, its office suite has been around for a while now, as well as its own browser.   All areas that have been very important to Microsoft.

Microsoft: Bing is its major search initiative and encroachment into Google’s core area of expertise

Alliances
The potential news content (News Corp., and perhaps AP, Reuters) being available through Bing only is an interesting, yet tricky proposition.  What is a definite outcome of such a deal is a huge loss of traffic for any property that excludes Google.  According to Compete, Google holds 73% of the search market share.  Excluding that traffic would obviously lead to lower page views and that is still the main monetization model of news sites.  It would be interesting to see how much Microsoft is willing to offer news publishers to offset that.

This ‘blockade’ of Google can backfire quite easily because many news providers use AP and Reuters content such as The New York Times.  So it seems that the content would still be accessible, just from a different destination.

Time will better judge this potential alliance/blockade but the initial thinking about its financial success is skeptical in terms of revenue, yet it may not be about that.  This may be a step to deny Google their stated goal of indexing all of the world’s information.

Similarly, speculation of who will acquire Twitter in 2010 is something to watch (no matter what is currently said) and again this will not be about revenue generation much like Google’s purchase of YouTube. Twitter and YouTube’s monetization is far from proven as has been seen.  So these are all big picture, defensive in nature moves and are not necessarily about revenue generation.

It seems that these are just skirmishes for what is ahead, and that is the battle for the ‘Hearts and Minds’ of consumers to become their preferred technology brand.

Although it seems that Google has an advantage because its product development model lets it release a multitude of diverse products that live in the ‘cloud’ (Gmail, Wave, Voice, Maps, Profile, Docs, Calendar, Reader, etc…), the flaw may be precisely in the way how these products are developed – by individual teams that seem to have difficulties integrating their products together.  Few of the products come together in any meaningful away and Google will have to overcome that challenge.

Microsoft’s has the track record in creating integrated user experiences across various services, yet its challenge will remain in moving and monetizing their services and products in the ‘cloud.’

Much like during the Cold War when U.S. and U.S.S.R. battled over distant developing countries, achievements in space, and weapons races, similarly this technology conflict will take both companies into new places. Both will venture far and wide across many aspects of technology,  so watch out mobile, music, GPS, telecoms, display ads, video, RFID, etc… This will be interesting, drawn out, high stakes, difficult to analyze, yet interesting.

[Also published on Social Media Today]

Search is a hot topic these days and has occupied many headlines. “Bing takes market share from Google”, “YouTube is the second most popular search engine”, “Facebook competes with Google by acquiring FriendFeed”, and so on… The more I see these, the more it seems that we cannot group all these discussions under the headings of general category of “search.” It seems that we may not be talking about a single market share but a market that is evolving, growing, and segmenting itself. I believe time has come to begin to distinguish the various type of “search” into sub categories that are based on user intent or expectation of what a user wants to do. These are the proposed categories:

Real time, personalized advice: This is grounded in a belief that micro content platforms and social networks are competing with traditional search engines. Users can tap their personal networks for queries like “what is the best way to manage Twitter?” or “What is a good hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica?”

I don’t think that this is a type of search that is worrying Google for the next several years. Yes, they are taking steps to making their search results more real-time, but ultimately this type of search depends on the strength of one’s social network and its ability to field these questions. Most users still wound not rely consistently on their social networks to provide the type of information. If this were a threat to traditional search engine use, we would begin to see a decrease in overall number of queries and users on Google, Yahoo, and Bing and that has not happened yet.

Video and music search: This category is strong enough to stand on its own at this point and while I have heard the mention of “YouTube is the 2^nd most popular search engine”, perhaps it is better to say that it is the “top video search engine” or “top niche search engine” because it simply ONLY indexes video content.

It comes down to: does a user want to watch video or do they want to read? AND, the way we consume information currently is by consuming various information sources quickly. We scan content and therefore reading seems to be the most appropriate way. Reading suits our short attention spans (created in no small part by TV)— and videos are actually less efficient way of consuming information. Therefore, video search is a category, not an all encompassing search engine. It’s a tool for entertainment and niche instructional segments.

And finally:

Topical (or traditional) search: Traditional search engines will remain the immediate source of information for all types of results, video, niche, news, education, etc…. They are effective regardless of how strong your social network is and they have an algorithm behind delivering authoritative results. Going back to an earlier point, if that position was threatened we would already be seeing those trends.

It is important to distinguish between the various types of search in order to be able to properly understand the role of each because it impacts user experience and expectation as well as how organizations can plan to leverage them, but they are not all “search”.

Interesting article in our company’s MOVE Magazine about Health 2.0. Apologies for the shameless self promotion.