Is It Time To Give Google Buzz Another Look?

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Here at SEO.com headquarters, we live in a world of Twitter users. It is not uncommon to see at least 90% of the employees with Tweetdeck up on their second monitors following what is happening in the twittersphere.

Recently, Robert Scoble posed the question, “Should we give Google Buzz another look?” Last week at SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts said almost the exact same thing when answering a question posed by Danny Sullivan. Here is what Matt said:

“Do you remember when you first started on Twitter, and you didn’t know quite what to do with it? Who do I follow? What do I say? I didn’t really “get” Twitter for months. But as I found interesting people to follow and got the hang of it, I began to see the appeal of Twitter and started using it more often. I’ve noticed Buzz is tracing that same trajectory for me: an initial burst, followed by a bit of a slump, and then a steady climb as I found people that make Buzz interesting.

Buzz fits nicely between tweeting and blogging. Twitter is perfect when you want to share a link or a single crystallized idea. But Twitter isn’t as strong for group discussion or expressing medium- to long-form ideas. At the same time, blogging is great when you want a permalinked url that will stand the test of time, but it can be a real pain to write a blog post. I always feel like I have to polish my blog posts and it seems to take me at least an hour to write a blog post no matter what I say.

Buzz has the casual feel of Twitter, but you can dive into a topic pretty deeply. Buzz is easier than a blog post, but can look almost as polished. I find Buzz especially good for asking opinions, because the signal-to-noise ratio is (at least right now) quite high. I think Buzz is incredibly strong for internal company discussions too, so I’m looking forward to Buzz rolling into Google Apps.”

Personally, I’ve never considered Buzz to be anything more than what Twitter can offer me; however, I do see some value to the service now that I understand it a little better. I am also starting to believe that mentions of a website URL in Buzz holds more value in terms of building credibility in the SEO realm than mentions of URLs in Twitter.

It will be interesting to see where Buzz goes over the next year or so. I believe that over the next twelve months, we will be able to see if Buzz will flourish, or if it will simply fade way and be forgotten.