Google rolled out Buzz last week, and many advisers are wondering how they can use it.
First, what's the Buzz about? Designed for personal computers and mobile devices, Google Buzz works like an RSS feed combined with your social networking — all within the existing Gmail and Google infrastructure.
This free new feature of Google's popular Gmail — with its established base of 176 million users — permits those with an account to share updates, photos and videos, as well as start conversations.
What is in it for advisers?
Admittedly, not a whole lot just yet.
But given time, Google Buzz will morph into a sort of social-media Swiss army knife. Google plans to make public its application programming interface, meaning that developers of other software can more easily integrate with it.
Once you are granted access to Google's Buzz (for Gmail users, it will appear at some point when you log in, if it hasn't already), you will be able, from within Gmail, to follow the people with whom you e-mail and chat with the most.
Despite what pundits are saying, Buzz isn't really a threat to Facebook or Twitter.
But it does provide some handy social-media features to antiquated web-based e-mail, which is still used by millions every day.
There are some ways an adviser might use Google Buzz. If, for instance, a significant portion of your clients are using Gmail, you can use Buzz in much the same way that many advisers have taken to using Twitter.
Buzz is a simple way to keep clients updated in real time on your thoughts via text messages — without the 140-character limit that Twitter imposes.
An-other plus is that on Google Buzz, you don't have to transmit your messages to the whole world, as is the case with Twitter. There are both “public” and “private” options for each Buzz you compose and send.
Selecting the latter allows you to choose who will receive your message, while a public Buzz can be searched by the Gmail population at large. (A “search Buzz” button is provided, just as you have a text window in Gmail for initiating searches of your mail account or the web at large.)
In addition to sharing your thoughts in text, you can share charts or video without your client having to open separate windows or download and save attachments. The additional material simply will be embedded on the screen for viewing.
You can also alter your settings to allow your other Google applications to update and send out automatic Buzz posts as well. These include shared items from Google Reader (Google's free RSS feed aggregator), Picasa web public photo albums and Google Chat status messages.
This means that after you click a few checkboxes, all the updates to these services will appear automatically as posts in Google Buzz.
And Google properties aren't the only ones available.
Users of Flickr, Yahoo's im-mensely popular photo-hosting site, and Twitter already have a one-way pass onto Buzz. Users can automatically import content from those services into their Google Buzz feeds, though not the other way around just yet.
It isn't as if these features haven't been thought of before.
Yahoo and Microsoft's Windows Live services have similar content-sharing features built into sections of their web products. Many of these, however, were released before the advent of Twitter and the explosion in Facebook usage.
For the most part, they weren't as well-integrated into their parent's core offering as Buzz is with Google.
All this leads to a question that I am sure is on the mind of advisers: Why should I care?
Google is already doing with Buzz what it has done for years very successfully with its search algorithms and its specialized products such as Gmail and YouTube. The company lets the masses start using the features, collects data on how to improve the offering and then integrates the feedback it deems most appropriate.
I have spent several days using the features of Google Buzz and tracking hundreds of responses from users suggesting various ways to improve it.
Buzz has many good points already. For example, it lets users click “not interested” on recommended status updates if they don't wish to see that particular type of update again.
There are plenty of other suggestions, including adding the ability to organize the people you are following into groups, a way to collapse long discussions, and a way to turn off follow-up messages' being delivered into your Gmail inbox.
I would like to hear from advisers who have started using Buzz. Please e-mail me or visit the InvestmentNews LinkedIn group, where there will be a discussion on this topic.
(I will be starting an IN Tech blog this week. You can find it on the InvestmentNews.com home page. This week, I will provide real-time coverage of the annual Technology Tools for Today conference Thursday and Friday in San Diego.)
E-mail Davis D. Janowski at djanowski@investmentnews.com.
