thesethings's posterous

thesethings's posterous

thesethings (andy)  //  @thesethings
portland, oregon
lately: #datascraping #bash #python #design #fun #delight #twitter #tumblr #screencasts

Filed under

enterprise it

See all posts on posterous with this tag ยป
 
Feb 11 / 1:03am

Google Buzz is not a hot mess. Google contact and relationship management is a hot mess.

Is Google Buzz a hot mess? Some are saying exactly that. (Disclosure: That's my good friend saying that. And we call everything a hot mess.)

But as imperfect as Google Buzz is, I really like parts of it. Most of the genuinely difficult/alarming things about Buzz are specifically about contact/relationship management issues that Google has with all of its services.

So let's talk about Googlelandia's messy contact management.

To this day, many people don't understand what exactly makes somebody new appear in their Google Chat list all of a sudden. It's the same black box contact system at play, people. And as in the pre-Google Buzz days, Google defends their wacky system by letting you shut the whole auto-friend system down if you feel freaked out. But that results in people you want to share with going dark, too.

As Kevin Rose said in his Google Buzz review,

"just because I’ve emailed with someone a few times doesn’t mean I want to auto-follow them"

And this ain't the half of it. It's not just about privacy. It's about inconsistencies.
Some bugs I've found:

  • No matter how a contact is entered in Google contact manager by a human, future presentations of it sometimes appear capitalized, sometimes not
  • Even erased contacts (due to mispelling), appear as ghost autocompletes in their original misspelled form
  • Searching contacts by last name is broken (Google Apps-specific)

It's time for Google to hand over the reigns of "friend" management to users. We need something more nuanced than our current all-in/all-out options. This isn't because I'm an unimaginative privacy freak. I'm not totally opposed to trial paternalism. Sometimes giving organizations like Google a chance to try crazy ideas is totally worth it. But this social map they make just never hits its mark. They need to go back to the drawing board, and let us add friends/groups by hand. It works great in Google Apps when we add collaborators to our choosing. We should be able to do that with Buzz, chat, and Reader too.

This is really in Google's best interest. Once contacts are under control, people will feel way more comfortable exploring services like Google Buzz without the extra stress of a ticking privacy timebomb.

"Surprise! All your friends and coworkers have been surfaced in unpredictable ways!" is not a good vibe to set when you want people to explore your new platform.

Filed under  //  collaboration   enterprise it   google apps   google buzz   guess who's not crazy   hot mess   privacy   relationships   social web  
 
Feb 10 / 3:04am

Google Buzz, the enterprise, and Google's messy habit of tying unrelated services to Gmail

(Warning: I'm going to talk about enterprise stuff. AKA, internal IT efforts. This topic can be really honk-honk-snore for some folks. I wouldn't blame you if clicked Back now. Can I interest you in an iPad article?)

Google announced Google Buzz on Tuesday. As with many Google social tools, many folks I've spoken to are impressed with Buzz's tech, but not its experience. ( Google just isn't the greatest at managing social relationships and contacts in any of its apps. Even adding somebody as a friend in Google chat is strangely awkward and unnecessarily obtuse...)

That said... I think Google Buzz has potential to make an impact in a less web-centric place: the enterprise... as an internal organizational tool. The playing field there is slightly easier to pick off. Expectations and habits are less well-worn, and Google would have some big advantages. Requirements in the enterprise are different. A primary one is the ability to integrate with corporate directory services, something Google Apps already does relatively well. If Google Buzz gets integrated into Google Apps, as Google has announced it will, the directory hurdle is easily cleared. Good for Google, and good for organizations using Google Apps who are otherwise evaluating, negotiating, and integrating another 3rd party microblogging tools like Yammer into their environment.

But in order to really clinch the enterprise deal, Buzz needs to be more decoupled from Gmail. At least at the presentation layer. For one thing... lots of organizations do NOT integrate the entire Google Apps stack. Many use Google Docs without using Gmail. By keeping unrelated tools tied to Gmail, Google accidentally locks out a lot of functionality. (They've done this with the Groups feature of Apps, for example. It's really hobbled if you don't use Gmail, despite its application to non-mail behaviors.) Many organizations looking for an activity stream-like tool like Buzz, are evaluating it as its own service, independent of email. Even when an organization does use Gmail, Buzz really needs to feel a la carte. The Buzz API will ideally create a rich ecosystem of a la carte Buzz tools, but it'd be cool if Google got this at a fundamental level.

Google long ago announced Google Wave's eventual availability for Google Apps customers, something that has yet to happen. Given the giant lateral leap Google Wave represents, I can't blame the slow roll out. But much of the experience Google Buzz represents, is stuff we've already internalized and do in our daily life. We just don't necessarily have it in large organizations yet. Google can be involved in this internal-org shift in a big way if it doesn't insist on indulging in its wacky idiosyncrasies.

Filed under  //  enterprise it   google apps   google buzz   google docs   google wave   organizational culture   yammer