Future of Google Buzz

[wardmundy]

Once Groups/List support comes to Google Buzz, we might want to rethink PBX in a Flash forums. Google Buzz provides an incredibly rich and instantaneous platform for discussion threads and searching with no support overhead.

1. What do you think?
2. Have you tried Google Buzz?
3. Have you read this week's Nerd Vittles article?

 

[kenn10]

I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop with Google and their business model. How do they make money?

Is this all the beginning of SkyNet?

 

[DavidBer]

I will not participate in it at all. If the future of 'forums' is going to google, then see ya.

I have a serious problem with the amount of data that they are aggregating and what they are doing with it. I choose to come here for my asterisk based needs. I do not share my email with you, I do not share my searches for other things with you. You have only one pocket of information about me. Google wants all of it. Don't believe me? Look at what is going on with the books case in New York right now.

Back in the 90s people accused Microsoft of being the 'evil empire.' Sorry, but microsoft is a lamb, whereas google is the wolf.

Ironically there is a recent BBC show that explains how I feel. BBC Virutalrevolution The price of free is to high for me. I will not get a gmail account, I am very tempted to move away from google to anything else for searching. However, I am a slight hypocrite in that I am using Chrome.

 

[wardmundy]

Thanks, David. I share some of the same sentiments. The one correction I would offer is that you don't have to share your email address or any other personal information with Google Buzz... unless you choose to do so. That obviously wasn't the case a week ago. We're just thinking out loud, but maintaining a forum is an endless, thankless, time-consuming, and expensive proposition. And PBX in a Flash is a volunteer-based, profitless operation if you get my drift. It's not that we don't want to provide a good product, but these peripheral endeavors are anything but trivial. :sweatdropb: Incidentally, everything on this forum is indexed by Google already so it's not like they don't already have the data.

 

[jroper]

Hi

I like visiting this forum and others, when I want to, when I have the time, and when I am in the right frame of mind to answer questions, bearing in mind that once I reply, my words will probably be in cyberspace long after I'm dead, and probably cannot be removed from the internet.

I do not want peoples support questions shoved in my face at random times of the day by having them turn up in my Buzz inbox, (unless they are paying me for it ;-))

I'd prefer to offer my support here on my own terms; Buzz would not allow me to do that.

The BBC program, Virtual Revolution should be compulsory viewing for anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

Joe

 

[wardmundy]

What I had in mind was building a user interface similar to the Topics and Forum Threads interfaces in the existing vBulletin software. Then use Google Buzz for the actual threaded discussions. Each of them would look something like this.

I did not envision making this new forum design part of your existing Google Buzz Inbox. That obviously would be a nightmare.

What we're currently missing is a way for multiple people to generate new discussion topics out of a single account... but I'm working on it. With that missing piece, the rest would be pretty trivial to build and maintain.

 

[TDF]

If you move the forum to Google Buzz I can see it being a very lonely place, not quite as lonely as if you'd gone Google Wave when that seemed like a great idea.

For my money you can't beat a forum for ease of display and archiving of information.

I can see a backlash against Google growing, more and more people are getting uneasy with sharing ever more with them.

The mobile part of Buzz does seem like it could be cool though, we will have to see if it catches on.

Forums on Buzz though, no thanks.

 

[DavidBer]

Ward.

I am well aware that running forums is a tireless endless annoying and lots of other adjectives thing. I helped run a vbulletin forum for years for a video game I played. Yes, it is annoying. I often felt it would be nice to be able to let someone else do the day to day crap. You know, kill the spam bots, make sure the db is backed up, make sure it is up-to-date and no sql injections, etc.

Doing a asterisk install that is free is also annoying as you get people complaining like there is no tomorrow because something they paid nothing for does not work because they are too lazy to read the manual, or search the forums.

My only suggestions are is to keep the paypal donate button up. I would also suggest selling support. I think you will find that there are two types of users. A user who is just coming into asterisk and says . . . wtf? What do I need to do to get a linksys 3102 to work and how does that work with asterisk? and the other user would be . . . how do I get 6 remote locations to talk to each other and each have extensions at each location and oh yeah . . . I need it to turn on the oven for me 2 hours before I leave work

Both of those guys probably would not mind spending 20-$50 for a quick how-to/hand hold. That may help offset the bandwidth/hosting bills and possibly make this closer to break even financially.

I know what I said is really not on topic of the original thread but just how I feel.

Another thing, seeing that I am off topic, is that I came from the trixboxx world. I ran it for a while and then one day my extensions stopped working. The install was very old and I figured there had to be a better solution. I temporarily rolled my own asterisk/freepbx install on a clark connect box and figured there had to be a better solution. So I started looking at all the other players and somehow found pbxinaflash. I figured it was a quick enough download and I would test it on a machine. IMO the install kicked every other installs ass I had ever seen. Sure the naming convention of orgmastron was odd but the install of the whole system was so obscenely simple and stable that this is where my home is now. I have recommended the software to a dozen or so people I know and will continue to do so.

Ok back on topic . . .

Google indexes the site. They do not know my email address from your site and they do not know my real name. They do not know the IP address I am on. They just know that someone called davidber typed this message. That I like.

Joe - you liked that program? I am actually telling a few people at my daughter's high school about it. I think it should be mandatory watching by the staff, the students and the parents.

 

[wardmundy]

Thanks for the comments, David. It is David, right? Not really frustrated with the business model. We didn't go into PBX in a Flash looking to make money... and we've been richly rewarded just not with money.

Still looking for ways to reduce the agony of the things we all hate doing. You could easily use the same UserID you use here with Google Buzz. And you can protect your email address from disclosure should you want to do that. So I'm kinda missing your point other than you just don't like Google.

Yes, some folks (like me) give away additional information in our Google Profile, but you don't have to. Try it out and then tell me where the privacy problem lies. I think you'll find there no longer is one unless it's of your own making.

 

[jroper]

Yes, the piece last night on Dumbar's law was very relevant, and the offer of a Free Burger in exchange for getting rid of 10 friends on Facebook was very telling.

I would not say anything in public about pirating this series if I were you, a bit of judicious editing would be a good idea.

Joe

 

[blanchae]

That's the problem with being successful

It seems that success is sometimes its own enemy as the extra work of maintaining this forum is one of the results. I would be hesitant about moving to Google Buzz because you are handing off final control to someone else's business model.

There's a couple of recent incidences where free services (Geocities, Lycos Europe, AOL Journals and Hometown) decided that the business model didn't work any more and just closed the services with minimal notice. Thousands of users found that their websites didn't work any more and lost their data.

The owners of the forced closure of their websites found that they lost their customer base as now their web presence is dead for thousands of bookmarks.

It would be a simple matter if you owned the domain name but if you go through a free hosting service like Google Buzz, you don't. Here's your url:

http://www.google.com/buzz/louisgray/NL2JRe5BVPr/Google-Buzz-Reduces-Power-Users-Bumpage

That's one of the dangers of using Google Buzz

 

[wardmundy]

There's a couple of recent incidences where free services (Geocities, Lycos Europe, AOL Journals and Hometown) decided that the business model didn't work any more and just closed the services with minimal notice. Thousands of users found that their websites didn't work any more and lost their data.

Very good points. Thanks.

 

[Alex728]

It seems that success is sometimes its own enemy as the extra work of maintaining this forum is one of the results. I would be hesitant about moving to Google Buzz because you are handing off final control to someone else's business model.

and the business model depends on people sharing enough info to attract advertisers - if the backlash becomes big enough that more and more become more wary of privacy issues then Google will not just take their ball away but dismantle the playing field..

 

[wardmundy]

Of course we've already "hand[ed] off final control to someone else's business model." In this case, it's vBulletin whose new pricing scheme is just short of extortion.

 

[DavidBer]

Of course we've already "hand[ed] off final control to someone else's business model." In this case, it's vBulletin whose new pricing scheme is just short of extortion.

WTH . . . a 10% discount for upgrades. WOW.

 

[scott2020]

I guess I just don't get the whole buzz/wave thing. Google has done some great things, but lately there seems to be some busts. One day Buzz shows up in my gmail with a bunch of blog entries from people, and I started to wonder what do other people see about what I am doing? It was enough for me to disable it totally until I can better understand it. I think many others are doing the same.

I would rather see a donate button or even more banner ads. Unfortunately for people who depend on ad revenue, banner blocking software is too easy now. But, true fans of this site would certainly whitelist it in order to generate revenue for you.

I would also rather see volunteer moderators or something to help with the day to day BS, if that is possible.

VBulletin must have some great features, because I see it everywhere. There are other free forum programs out there as I'm sure you are aware. Also, there must be someone in the PIAF community with spare server resources to host the forums if that part of it is hurting financially.

I guess I'm old school and just like the forum type format with the small amount of anonymity that comes with it!

 

[invictive]

I, like many others, have started to delete my google/facebook/myspace/etc accounts. I am tired of giving all of my information to these huge corporations.

If this were hosted on google buzz I'm sure somewhere in the fineprint it would say that they own this information. They could someday decide to shutdown the forum and offer some of the information in here for sale. (I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it could happen)

One of the reasons that we all use PIAF is because it is open source, there is nothing open source about google.

Just my $0.02

Let's not put all our eggs in one basket and use Google for everything.