In case you didn’t hear, Twitter has signed a deal with Yahoo for a somewhat more advanced integration than it has with Google or Microsoft. A conversation I had just yesterday with a friend at Agence France-Press (AFP) got me to thinking, and now this announcement has started to confirm my theory:

Twitter is starting to sound an awful lot like a social wire service.

Check below the cut for the rest.

Here’s a passage from the LA Times story about the Yahoo deal:

The partnerships with Twitter and Facebook will roll out later this year. The deals will enable users to take material from both sites without having to leave either one, said Jim Stoneham, vice president of communities for Yahoo. Specifically, users will be able to access their Twitter feed on Yahoo’s sites. They will also be able to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo. And Yahoo search and media properties will include Twitter updates.

Look at it this way. Imagine a news-ticker, on all your news sites, that streams breaking news not just from the major news organizations (of your choosing, of course), but also from your friends, family, and professional contacts. Imagine a news article where the headline was pulled from Twitter, the content was a digitally combined series of blog posts by highly-ranked bloggers, and the images were pulled from Flickr, Twitpic, and yFrog. Just imagine the fundamental shift in news, business, advertising–you name it–that would come from this.

Sure, real journalism would still survive–in fact it would likely thrive as more and more people look for authentic, reputable news sources. But for breaking news stories and immediate analysis of the events you are most interested in, what better to give you the news then your favorite news sources and all your friends?

I know that nowadays, it’s rare for me not to hear a piece of breaking news on Twitter first. Most of the things on TV are at least 30 minutes old, and the newspapers? Ha, they couldn’t break news if their industry depended on it… well, I won’t go there.

But could this Twitter-Yahoo deal be edging towards something much, much larger? We’ve all heard that Twitter’s goal is to be the “pulse of the planet”, could this be the key to achieving that goal? How will news agencies react? How will wire services, the AP, AFP, Reuters, all of them, survive? If more people are breaking news faster, and providing free, high-quality photos, videos and audio for these events, what justifies the high cost?

There’s a lot to think about here, all of it purely conjecture. But it’s fun to imagine. What do you think about the Twitter-Yahoo deal? Is it just another deal like they’ve got with Microsoft and Google? Is it on the verge of something better, like I’m theorizing?

The Google rhetoric is getting a little ridiculous. Yesterday, they announced Google Buzz, a FriendFeed-Facebook-Twitter sort of mash-up built right into gmail. I just read a mini-review of the service by Jason Calacanis. He began with:

BREAKING: Google Buzz is brilliant. Like ground-breaking,
game-changing brilliant.

He then went on to suggest “Facebook has just lost half its value,” that “this could actually derail the Facebook IPO” and even said “If Google adds social gaming to Google Buzz Facebook is 2012′s Pointcast.”

Google Buzzkill?

Not in a million years. Here’s the deal, people: Google is not God. They are not a perfect company, and they’ve had plenty of failures. Just like Apple, who proved two weeks ago even they can produce disappointing products (*ahem* the iPad), just because Google slaps their name on something doesn’t mean it’s going to be a winner.

Google Buzz might have potential, but from where I’m sitting I’m not terribly impressed. Several reasons for this.

Facebook is still bigger, and Twitter is still simpler

Easily Facebook’s biggest advantage is its size. There are plenty of complaints about the site, and plenty of complaints about their corporate “stealing of ideas” from Twitter, but with over 400 million active users it pretty well dwarfs Gmail’s 150 million accounts.

Calacanis made the point that Google Buzz is much more secure, privacy-wise, than Facebook, as well. But is that a good thing? It could be argued as a good thing for users, but in my eyes it’s a pretty regressive concept. The future of the Web is open, in my humble opinion, not closed. Google is taking the open nature of all these systems and putting them in a lockbox–your inbox.

As for Twitter, its differentiating factor has always been its simplicity. Twitter is simple. It’s one box, 140 characters, that’s it. It can take a little coaching to really understand the value to be found with the service, but all in all, it’s pretty simple.

Google Buzz strives to be simple, too. It “auto-generates your network,” says Calacanis, a feature that he seems to think is a huge leap over those old ways of actually building your own network. But what if I don’t want them to auto-generate my network? What if not all my friends use gmail? What if Google Buzz’s definition of “what’s interesting” is different than mine? Perhaps its just me but I’m taking all of the buzz around Google Buzz with a hefty grain of salt for now.

Who wants a more cluttered inbox?

I don’t know about you, but speaking for myself and most of the journalists and communications professionals I know, we’ve got ridiculously cluttered inboxes as it is. Google Buzz takes your most recent comments and updates and puts them in your inbox, “to make sure you don’t miss them” says the introductory video on their Web site. That’s the last thing I need, is one more thing taking up space and distracting me from more important e-mails, work, etc.

Are you active on Twitter? Imagine if you got an e-mail every time you’re mentioned. For me that would be 50-60 additional e-mails a day, on average. And Facebook? What if you got an e-mail for every single comment, photo, friend request, or application invite you received. Most people have hundreds, if not thousands, of Facebook friends–the thought of seeing all that nonsense in my inbox is terrifying.

Buzz is built off of the existing Gmail infrastructure. Sure, it’s convenient if you’re a Gmail user, but it’s also one more thing to deal with. Some people, like my sister are just turning it off altogether.

Do we need another social network interface?

Who says we want this? Who says users want this? Plenty of people are already noting the similarities to FriendFeed with Google Buzz. FriendFeed flopped and got bought up by Facebook–what makes Google think they can put it out with a different name and make it work? Sure they’ve got a bigger installed base, but if people are just turning it off then who’s to say it’s actually going to be used?

Personally I like having my networks a little bit separated. I focus most of my social media time on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and think of them as a sort of tiered network system for my connections. Twitter is the catchall–I’m connected to people I know in person, people I only know online, and people I just want to get to know. LinkedIn is for my professional connections, people whom I want to have intelligent, career-related conversations with. Finally Facebook is for people I really know, people I know and like in person or at least know pretty well online.

Google Buzz throws that out the window and says, “okay, you’ve sent these people multiple e-mails, we’ll make you a friend on Google Buzz.” No thanks.

On top of all that, there’s a social network for everything. There’s FourSquare for location, Meetup.com for in real life connections, all the old standbys, plus Ning for individual, issue/company/topic-specific social networks. What is Google Buzz adding to the mix that we don’t already have. How is it going to make my social media interaction online better? I’m not seeing any answers for that question.

For marketing and communications professionals, Buzz seems pretty well worthless.

How does this benefit business? How can Buzz be used by marketing and communications professionals to reach out to new audiences, to interact with new customers, to innovate in customer service? Twitter and Facebook play invaluable roles in marketing and communications today, but Buzz is noticeable lacking in that arena.

Sure, it’ll have Google Adsense, I’m sure, but Adsense is nothing but a faucet of money for Google, coming from junk ads that few people really click on anyway. Although my career is young, I’ve never heard Adsense mentioned as playing a significant role in any marketing or communications campaign.

Nope, from what I see Google Buzz looks to be no fun for us. And if it succeeds in draining some of the momentum from Facebook and Twitter–which I honestly don’t think it will–it’ll be a shame that so much of the innovation in customer service, community outreach, online organizing and online marketing and communications in general will have gone down the drain with those services.

If Google can prove to me why all the things I just mentioned are addressed, or can convince me why the things above don’t matter, then maybe they’ll begin to win me over.

What do you think about Google Buzz? Are you using it already? Have you noticed yourself visiting Facebook and Twitter less often because of the service?

Anyway, this is a quickie. Just wanted to point out that from now on I will be writing for not only this blog, but also two other blogs! First, I’ll be contributing to the brand spanking new Shamable.com, written as a guide for public relations and communications professionals, with a more serious, realistic take to the industry than some other blogs that may or may not have been spoofed for the title. The people contributing to this blog are top-notch, triple-A professionals with fantastic ideas and brilliant track-records.

I’m honored to be a part of their site and I hope I can provide some valuable input from my student perspective! Be sure to check out my first entry on the blog (more to come this week), about teaching social media (professors, pay attention to that one).

Secondly, I will now be writing for the AU Intern Blog for the American University Career Center. There I’ll be reflecting on my internship experience this semester at MS&L Worldwide as well as some other random internship-related thoughts that might be bumping around in my head. I’ve actually written two posts for it just tonight, you can see my introduction here and my comments on the TechCrunch intern “scandal” here.

I’ll do my best to note on here when I’ve made some significant contributions to the other two blogs, but please add them to your RSS reader (and me, for that matter!) and keep your eyes peeled for new updates from me and my fellow contributors. Thanks, as always, for reading. Tomorrow evening I’ll have a recap of the fantastic panel event I attended this morning as well as some thoughts on what may be in store, in the near term, for my future (might be a bit vague!).

[Shamable]
[AU Intern Blog]

First, D.C. Media Makers! I attended my first event on Wednesday evening at NPR’s headquarters here in Washington, and it was fantastic! Got to see some very cool people I’ve gotten to know over the past few weeks, and got to hear the amazing Jen Consalvo (@noreaster on Twitter) speak about her photography work, how to get into photography, and some tips on how to get better shots–even on an iPhone (for what it’s worth, she recommended CameraBag as excellent filter app, pretty cool!).

As a side note on DCMM, this semester I’ve obviously been trying to get out in the city and meet people, go to events, hear speakers, get involved in unconferences, etc. It’s already paying off, and in a big, big way. I’ve met some absolutely amazing people and developed some good friendships already. I feel like I can go to any event now and usually see someone I know. This city is huge, but the community is smaller than it seems, and everyone has been so incredibly welcoming! I can’t encourage my fellow students, and professionals, enough: get out there and take advantage of this amazing city. Meet some of the incredible professionals out here and say hi, get to know them. I know I’ve learned so much just in the past few weeks from these people, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Thanks so much to all of you who’ve taught me, even indirectly, and I’m already looking forward to the next event!

Now, in a more general life update, things have been pretty crazy for me lately. School is piling on the work and the reading, and unfortunately that still has to be pretty much priority number one. However, there’s a couple cool things happening in my life:

• Soon I will be contributing my first post (of many, hopefully) to shamable.com. Seeking to be the no-B.S. guide to social media, it’s a new Web site being developed by some of the best people in the business. I’m seriously honored to be a part of it and I’m hoping I can make some valuable contributions from my perspective as a student here in D.C. during this social media revolution.
• I’m hard at work on my communications honors capstone. The first of two (I’ll do my business honors capstone next year), I’m really excited about the project and overjoyed that I have an absolutely amazing professor advising me with it. The project will ultimately be a social media case study in digital form, and will be appended to this Web site. Expect plenty of updates on that throughout the semester, especially towards the latter end of it.
• Internships, scholarships, awards, oh my! Yes indeed, it’s already that time and applications are littering my desk. This weekend I hope to make a fair bit of headway into scholarship applications for my senior year (gasp, can’t believe it’s almost here already) and internship applications for the summer. Speaking of which–do you know of any opportunities (preferably paid) for a young communications professional to work over the summer? Location not a factor, let me know! All tips are sincerely appreciated!
• It looks like it’s going to be a busy Saturday for me, as I’ve already got several things on the docket. In the morning I’m hoping to get down to the Washington Auto Show, especially since it’s garnered so much buzz this year. At 1:00pm I’ll be heading over to Politics & Prose bookstore here in northwest Washington for an event with one of my former professors, Robert Lehrman. He just had his book on speechwriting published (it’s amazing, by the way) and I’m eager to say hi again! Finally, Saturday night at 5pm the AU PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) will be holding a networking event at American University. If you’re a communications professional in the area and would be interested and coming to network with some eager public communications students, please let me know! We’d love to have you (and there will be free food).

And alas, I think that’s all I have time for this morning. I hope everyone has a fantastic day!