Google’s Struggle With Social Networking

Once all a buzz, this week Google announced that Google Wave was no more. They no longer plan to develop it as a standalone product. It seemed as if Google Wave never really took off, as many people struggled to find meaningful ways to use it. I wonder if it is because many people use existing communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook, and Google Wave was just too much to integrate into people’s lives. Also, it was exclusive at one point, and many people did not have access to it, which may have hurt the success of Wave as well. Google is continuing to work on launching a social product, although so far, they haven’t been very successful yet. Another Google product, Google Buzz, hasn’t gotten much traction either, even though it is integrated into Gmail – which many people use daily as their email client.

I personally use Google Buzz since I use Google Reader and like to share blog posts with my followers there, but only those who follow me on Google Buzz see it, which isn’t many. Because many of my friends use Facebook and Twitter, I see more response there when it comes to sharing news or interesting blog posts. Unless Google can find a way to integrate through Twitter and Facebook, it’s likely that they won’t see much success – unless they create something bigger and better than these two very popular social networking tools.