Image via CrunchBase

I kept trying to connect all the the dots around Google Buzz over the last few days and ran across this quote from Chris Messina.

“In fact, I’d argue that Buzz is as much about Google creating a new channel for conversation in a familiar place as it is about how we’re going about building its public developer surfaces. Although today’s Buzz API only offers a real-time read-only activity stream, the goal is to move quickly towards implementing a host of other technologies — most of which should be familiar to readers of this blog.”

That obviously speaks well to the "open web" movement and how Google is positioning its APIs. Whether or not dropping social elements in GMail is your idea of better collaboration, it’s hard to deny that familiarity with something as utilitarian as email breeds adoption.

But to think email is the only anchor the Buzz ship will hitch itself too is naive. Even if Buzz can make a permanent home in your inbox, that might be enough for it to make inroads against Microsoft and IBM in the messaging wars. In fact, just last week Gartner made some predictions about the forthcoming collision of email and social networks.

“By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.”

“Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.
“The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode.”

With Aardvark in the Google arsenal, it immediately gets deeper into social search, mobile and more importantly sets the stage for biting off bigger pieces of the enterprise. Think about how Aardvark could easily be repurposed as a self-service support tool incorporated into the fabric of Google Apps — with Buzz as the interface to support systems or social CRM services. All of sudden, it’s not just email that’s housing all that collaboration, it’s just another interface.

Image via CrunchBase

Aardvark has released its white paper paper "Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine" and it’s a good read. I’ve used Vark for a while — mostly answering questions through its SMS interface.

Their iPhone app is well done but I don’t tend to proactively search its database or topics to seek out questions to answer. I also use Hunch sparingly and have signed up for Quora but haven’t seen its offering yet. I think it’s interesting to think about the possibilities of Aardvark and other geo-location apps.

As people check-in to venues, invariably there’s a slew of questions that Vark’ers could answer about purchasing products, menu selections, etc.. Social search is some respects, the new, new word-of-mouth.

87.7% of questions submitted were answered, and nearly 60% of them were answered within 10 minutes.  The median answering time was 6 minutes and 37 seconds, with the average question receiving two answers.  70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.

I took the passage below from one of The Economist’s latest stories on social networking. I tend to agree with the assessment of Twitter as an “information company,” the more I see its evolution.

 

“..Mr Stone says he sees Twitter as more akin to an outfit like Google than to Facebook. He describes the business as “an information company” whose users are keen to find out answers to what is happening in the world. The billions of tweets that Twitter is gathering up could certainly be the basis for a vast, searchable archive. The challenge facing Mr Stone and his colleagues is to find smart ways of transforming those raw data into profits."

I know there’s a lot of folks who’ll go to their online grave exclaiming that Twitter is simply a community. I don’t disagree, I’ve worked inside my own Twitter community for almost three years.

But if you look at how the platform is being used and monetized, it’s exactly as Stone describes in the passage above. Both Google and Microsoft have compensated Twitter for its “information” and that interest doesn’t appear to be waning soon.

Both Bing and Google realized early on that real-time would have a big impact on the way people search for information. While they’ve got their own share of eyeballs, the reality is that you and I continue to communicate on an always-on and instantaneous channel as we share on Twitter’s platform.

None of the others — Google. Microsoft, or Yahoo — have anything to rival that. Of course Facebook is the closest. as The Economist points out, but still lacks the openness that Twitter provides. Until Facebook or another entrant opens to the web completely – a la Twitter – its information will remain at a premium.

 [Illustration above by Ian Whadcock]

  

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Erik Schonfeld writes about the information overload challenge, showing the overblown, Tweet-filled desktop of Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur.

While Twitter presents new challenges staying dialed in to the stream, it still does a helluva job vetting news and information once you get your network in place. It’s that last part {discovery} that poses the biggest challenge. Why else would you have to create 20 columns to scrape enough information together to get a few key morsels?

I think that’s why you’re seeing Twitter and other ecosystem partners focusing on search and curation. Once that starts to improve, I think you’ll see higher value networks start to bloom — and in much shorter time frames. We can then leave the "20-column" configurations in the rear-view mirror.

“It’s 18 months later and the problem hasn’t been solved. The screenshot I took back then still resonates because the noise is worse than ever. Indeed, it is being magnified every day as more people pile onto Twitter and Facebook and new apps yet to crest like Google Wave. The data stream is growing stronger, but so too is the danger of drowning in all that information."

Fast Company references NOTCOT.org for their latest piece on WorkSnug.
I hadn’t seen NOTCOT before but it looks like a interesting blend of design, innovation and techie stuff that’s useful. You can follow them on Twitter here.

As far as WorkSnug, I love the business model’s simplicity, though my fervor stems more from the useless miles I’ve driven looking for suitable workspaces. Here’s to their success.

“Using a database of ratings–from wi-fi signal to noise levels–Work Snug will lead you to a decent work space while you’re away from the office.”

I pulled this out of  Brightkite’s newsletter this morning to show how easy it is to build customer loyalty by simply listening. How many folks do you think this guy told after he got his free beer?

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You can get some insight around Redmond’s marketing strategy for Bing in this New York Times piece. I thought this spot was pretty good.

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