Google Buzz -A game of real time feeds

When google announced to launch its new service buzz, I was not surprised. In fact it was expected from google. As twitter is growing and real time feeds or content is spreading in internet space, leader like google can not ignore it. So they behaved accordingly.

  In past few years real time feeds are spreading in internet. The requirement and the taste of users in internet is changing. Now people want real time results, not the previously crawled pages. Twitter, Friendfeed like services are becoming more popular just because they provide you real time stream of feeds. If you want to know about the latest released movie or the recent baseball match you can get the real time feeds in twitter or friendfeed and the feeds are more reliable in fact because they are coming from the real users. This is the power of social networking that can not be avoided by search engines.

 As google admits in its blog that the updates of buzz will be included in search results means in upcoming days we’ll see real time feeds on queries via buzz too. Google has already done this with twitter. You can see the tweets in google search results now.

“Google Buzz is not intended as a challenge to Facebook or Twitter, but as a unique complement to those Web services,” said by a google executive. But this is hard to rely. Facebook has already changed its interface for user profiles and in its new GUI search is in more priority. You can find the real time updates from various facebook users in its search results.

  So, the world of internet searching is changing and social networking is playing a major role. Google can not avoid it and the buzz is a step towards this.

But my question is “Will Orkut updates be included in search results ?” As the site is run by google , will google avoid this?

Comparison of Facebook and Orkut

Here I am discussing about two popular social networking sites. Facebook and Orkut. In past few days we are watching some significant changes in both the sites. But still, Facebook is running far ahead from Orkut. So what makes Facebook world’s number 2 site (Alexa Rank) and why having a lots of changes Orkut is not competing with Facebook. Here are the things-

Social Networking

Well, social networking is more easy in Facebook rather then Orkut. I don’t understand the reason behind that Orkut does not allow to crawl the profile pages of its users by search engines. If you have to find someone you just type his/her name on google, it will show you their profile pages from Facebook or even linkedin,twitter  too. But not from Orkut WHY?

If you have to promote your product, brand or company , Facebook allows you to create pages that are known as Facebook pages. They are truly professional pages and can be used for brand promotion. I don’t see such a feature in Orkut.  So marketing professionals and brand promoters are not considering Orkut as platform. It makes Orkut away from Social Media world.

Developer’s View

Facebook has a good development kit that allows third party developers to access Facebook. Facebook API is very strong and easy to access. Facebook comment, Facebook streaming, Facebook widget, Facebook profile, Facebook connect, Facebook share are very popular tools that are used by the developers to access facebook from their application or website. Orkut is lacking in this point. They have come with Orkut share, similar to Facebook share. But still they have to cover a long journey to beat Facebook.

Sharing With Other Sites/Twitter

Facebook can be integrated with other social platforms and vice versa. For example you can send your tweets to Facebook directly and you can update your twitter status via Facebook (pages) too. Twitter is a rapidly growing site and the integration of  Facebook and twitter is a good step for both the sites.

GUI

In terms of GUI the new Orkut is competing with Facebook somehow. Facebook did a beautiful use of Ajax to make their site more interactive and smooth. Orkut is doing the same with new Orkut.

Here are some figures that will really show you the difference

	Facebook	Orkut
Alexa rank	2	66
Quantcast rank	3	4928
Unique Visitors (Compete.com)	132,130,132 per month	410,239 per month

(Data compiled on 26 January 2010)

Orkut has its user base in India, Brazil and Paraguay. In India Orkut has rank 10 while facebook has its rank 4. So Orkut needs to reconsider its expansion plans because the new generation of internet users are more focusing on Facebook.