Tag: buzz
HOW TO: Integrate Google Buzz Into Your WordPress Blog
by neetika on Feb.16, 2010, under Gadgets, Latest Web Technologies, Trends
You can integrate Buzz with your other social networks, but what about integrating Buzz with your blog? If you use a self-hosted WordPress blog (sorry, WordPress.com users), there are already a variety ofGoogle Buzz plugins and add-ons available.
While it’s clear that people are really taking to using Buzz to share content and communicate, the service will undoubtedly reach more users as its sharing tools are integrated into other social sites. From buttons to social stream in your side bar, here’s how you can integrate Buzz with your WordPress blog.
Google Buzz Buttons
How our Google Buzz buttons work (and how the buttons other sites are using also work) is that they create a share link from that post toGoogle Reader. As long as Google Reader is connected with your Google Buzz account, your publicly shared items will also be shared on Buzz.
Already, a number of enterprising WordPress plugin developers have answered the call to add Google Buzz buttons to WordPress posts.
Let’s take a look:
Google Buzz Button
Internet Techies created the Google Buzz Button plugin that allows you to add a “Buzz This” button to each of your WordPress posts. That icon probably looks pretty familiar — that’s because the button was designed here at Mashable (though it isn’t the same plugin).
The plugin options are relatively limited — you can choose what “rel” attribute you include with the link (the default is “nofollow”) and you can choose to display the button before or after your post content. You can also specify the icon’s height and width. Making some changes to your WordPress theme’s CSS options, you could further customize the appearance of the button, but as it stands, it’s a pretty basic (and easy) way to add a Buzz button. If you want to add Buzz manually to only certain posts, there is a template tag that you can add to those posts.
WP Google-buzz
Another button plugin option is WP Google-buzz from Arpit Shah. This button is extremely similar to the Google Buzz Button plugin, but it adds a few more options. You can choose to show the button before or after content or to add it to posts manually, but there are also options for what style button you want to use. Depending on how you have your blog setup, you might want to use a different size or style of button.
WPBuzzer
Hameedulah’s WPBuzzer is the most robust of the Google Buzz button plugins as of right now. The style of the button is almost identical to what the Google Buzz Button use (albeit, not quite as clean), but the options are where this plugin really shines.
You can choose where you want your buttons to appear (on posts, on pages, on the home page, in your RSS feed), whether your want the button to appear before or after the post, the target for the button (a new window or a pop-up share option) and even the CSS style. You can also choose to use a small or large button.
The biggest feature is that you can track share counts (just like we do at Mashable) if you have a Bit.ly API key and login.
Light Social
The Light Social plugin takes a slightly different approach to the Google Buzz button. Light Social is a plugin that inserts a set of social share links at the bottom of each of your WordPress posts. This way links toDigg, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all automatically at the bottom of the post. The developer of Light Social updated the plugin to include a Google Buzz icon and share link as well. If you want to add lots of social options to your posts — Light Social is a good approach.
Buzz Your Comments
There are a number of different all-inclusive comment solutions for WordPress — there’s Echo, Disqus(which we use here at Mashable) and IntenseDebate. IntenseDebate is owned by Automattic, the people behind WordPress.com and some of the main contributors to the WordPress.org project. So it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s the first of the solutions to offer Buzz integration into its service.
If you use IntenseDebate on your blog, you can now easily add a Buzz It button to the top of your comment form. This won’t let people Buzz their own comments (we expect something like that will come in the future), but it adds another “Share on Buzz” option for your post to your visitors. If you use IntenseDebate, you can activate the Google Buzz This plugin by enabling it in the Plugins Directory.
Can Google Buzz Succeed Where FriendFeed Couldn’t?
by neetika on Feb.11, 2010, under Latest Web Technologies, Trends
Google just launched Google Buzz, the company’s new social networking service which will be tightly integrated with Gmail. There can be little doubt that Google Buzz looks a lot like FriendFeed, the social aggregation service that was acquired by Facebook in August 2009. Today, FriendFeed’s developers are Facebook employees and aren’t likely to continue to improve the service in any meaningful way, while the active user community on FriendFeed continues to shrink rapidly. Given the similarities between the two services, we can’t help but wonder if Google Buzz will be able to succeed where FriendFeed couldn’t.
As Louis Gray points out, Google Buzz validates FriendFeed’s ideas, but it also marginalizes the service even more. While some will look at Buzz as a Facebook/Twitter competitor, it also represents the final nail in FriendFeed’s coffin. We will surely see a lot of FriendFeed’s features appear on Facebook in the future, but FriendFeed as a stand-alone service has now lost its relevancy before it ever got a chance to go mainstream.
The real question, though, is whether Google Buzz will be able to succeed where FriendFeed couldn’t. FriendFeed never made it out of the early-adopter phase and slowly became a self-referential community that was never quite accessible enough for a larger audience.
Looks Familiar?
If you are not familiar with FriendFeed, just have a look at these two screenshots:
Google’s Advantage: Lifting FriendFeed’s Best Ideas and a Huge Built-In User Base
Google Buzz has a number of advantages over FriendFeed. While FriendFeed tried to attract early adopters and mostly catered to their tastes, Buzz has a built-in audience already. While FriendFeed had to work hard on building a thriving community and never managed to attract a large mainstream audience, Gmail is one of the world’s most popular email services and thanks to this, Buzz has millions of potential users from day one.
Also, while FriendFeed tried to allow users to connect to as many social services as possible, Google Buzz is just starting out with a few core Google and third-party services for now (Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader and Twitter). This will make it far more accessible than FriendFeed ever was.
Google is also putting a lot of emphasis on location-based and mobile services here, which is something FriendFeed never did. FriendFeed, for example, never offered a mobile app, while mobile apps and sites are one of the areas where Google is focusing on with Buzz.
The Buzz team has also been able to lift some of the best ideas from FriendFeed. You can “like” items, comment on them, you can see who liked a post (which looks identical to FriendFeed’s implementation of this feature) and Buzz will recommend items that it thinks will be interesting to you because your friends also liked them or commented on them.
What do you Think?
Do you think Buzz’s built-in mainstream user base help it to succeed where FriendFeed failed?
