Speaking of “feature checklist dysfunction,” this piece compares Twitter to Google Buzz.
There’s so much Twitter can’t do…
That simplicity has made Twitter a huge hit. But “simple” usually means “limited,” and Twitter is no exception. Your messages can’t be longer than 140 characters. There’s no text formatting. You can’t paste in photos or videos. There’s no filtering of messages. No way to rank or rate people or their utterances. No way to send messages out to canned groups of people, like Family or Co-workers.
There’s so much Google Buzz can do…
Google Buzz overcomes all of that. It’s a lot like Twitter (with huge helpings of FriendFeed.com thrown in), but there’s no length limit on your messages. You can search for messages, give certain ones a “thumbs up” (you click a button labeled Like as you do in Facebook). You can forward messages by e-mail. Comments and replies to a certain post remain attached to it, clumped together as a conversation. You can link to your Flickr, Picasa or YouTube accounts, making it easy to drop a photo or a video link into a Buzz posting.
You can also post messages to your Buzz account by e-mail, which is great when you’re on the move.
So a traditional feature checklist comparison would lead you to say Buzz is the clear winner. But then there’s the problem that comes with doing all that stuff: confusion.
In eliminating the Twitterish bare-bones simplicity, Google stepped right splat into the opposite problem: dizzying complexity. At the moment, it’s not so much Google Buzz as Google “Huh?”s.
Sometimes all that stuff your product does NOT do is exactly why people want it.
Miha S.
on 01 Mar 10There’s a lot of apps out there than can do just about anything you want it too (and also what you don’t want it to). So it’s really not about features anymore. I think it’s about the least features app must have to be still awesome. And that’s where Twitter kicks ass.
BradM
on 01 Mar 10Isn’t all that ‘stuff’ is what email is for? (ie. Forwarding messages / photos to groups of people, longer messages, etc)
Twitter ‘could’ have those features, simply by creating a secondary app using Twitter’s API. That’s the beauty of keeping it simple, then opening up the platform for other’s to develop on.
G.Irish
on 01 Mar 10Buzz has been out less than a month. I’d have to say give it time before you can say whether Buzz wins or loses. And who’s to say it has to “win” or “lose” against Twitter? Maybe it just coexists. No one points at Facebook and says, “Facebook loses to Twitter”.
That said, to me the issue is not necessarily more features vs less. It’s more about who can make their application usable. You could make something like Twitter with the same amount of features that is totally dysfunctional. And by the same token you could do something like Buzz and make it a breeze. Google might not have gotten Buzz quite right yet, but I don’t think it the number of features makes it impossible.
I’d agree that raw feature comparisons rarely determine the winner. It’s all about the execution.
Emin
on 01 Mar 10Simple or not, but I remember statistics that some 65% of first-time users do not get Twitter and leave. So it seems like it is not only about having less features.
George
on 01 Mar 10I’ve been using the Internet since around 1994, and my intuition told me to immediately turn off Google Buzz in the Gmail settings.
I’ve got Facebook for my friends. I use Twitter for discussions with journalists and my blog. I use e-mail to communicate with clients and non-Facebook family.
Where does Google Buzz fit into this? It doesn’t.
Nithin Bekal
on 01 Mar 10Totally agree with BradM here. There’s absolutely no need to squeeze in more features to develop a better app. Twitter can easily be extended using its API, keeping the main twitter app simple and uncluttered.
So far, I’ve been less than impressed with Google Buzz, and the only reason I haven’t turned it off is because I’m waiting to see how it evolves.
Brian Ward
on 01 Mar 10A big plus in the Buzz column for me is the identity system. I’m always logged into Gmail and I’m always checking it anyway, whereas I have to log in to Twitter separately and go out of my way to check it. This is a big selling point for me on many of Google’s products. It’s convenient, and that’s worth something.
Andrew
on 01 Mar 10So, the point of this is that checklists don’t cover ease of use? Because I’m sure you’re not comparing Buzz’s uptake after one month in the wild to Twitter’s use after 2+ years, and assuming it’s because Buzz has featuritis.
TBK
on 01 Mar 10I have to admit that your ” Less is better” looks good and can be applied to many products, just because for many years, people thought adding more features makes great products.
This said, more or less is, in general not the issue. What about relevance ? A product that fits users, often undiscovered needs, and just suits ! Something a bit similar to Apple’s “Triumph of Taste”. Having less feature removes the risk of complexity and the daunting tasks of simplifying already complex products. This said, Mac OS is a huge and complex product, but still simple to use. It does not necessarily have less features.
Last about Buzz, the fact that a company created a big hit ( in historical search) does not mean it has any particular advantage it a new arena (). Goog has been good at ” eat all you can”, unlimited capacity, ... when everything was scarce. Now, all that is irrelevant. And they make errors as anyone starting in a new domain.
Srini
on 01 Mar 10Attributing GBuzz issues to feature list is not right – I am with Emin, G.Irish
sebastian
on 01 Mar 10It’s like a new soda coming from the Coca-Cola of the internet. Big fishes can eventually win space just because their flagship is so big that they carry the rest. For me, buzz is irrelevant yet, but it will eventually be one more of the “buzz” tools available. That percentage of people leaving twitter is not invalidating the point of this post. Who leaves is not your the audience. Accept that and move on. By the way, stop hurting yourself trying to seduce everyone because it’s a guaranteed fail. People’s incompatible mindsets guarantee that fail. I don’t get why that’s so hard to get. BranM said something of value and I want to add this idea: 1. you make a neat & scalable service (model) of your webapp. 2. you add a simple UI easing the adoption curve. 3. you make a neat API so you enable gentle competition among colleagues. 4. if convenient you make a next generation UI and rebrand using your own API and service as backbone.
royler
on 01 Mar 10buzz and twitter seem like ways to get rss to people who cant figure rss readers out.
for the day or so i didnt realize my shared items from greader were going in buzz, friends with gmail accounts had a lot of comments and seemed to like seeing that stuff, but greader users saw double posts. i, of course, turned buzz off. i dont want to endorse avoiding the replacement for newspapers.
Jarek Sygitowicz
on 01 Mar 10Great post!
We’ve been thinking about the simplicity and how it can limit the software when we’ve been designing our own products.
To summarise the process, we have created http://www.movieorwhat.com website. It is the very definition of our way of thinking: - easy to understand (sorts user recommendations and answers one question – what should I watch during the weekend?) - clean design - leverages the “network effect” (creating isolated software nowadays is a crime against nature).
Just my 0.02USD.
cheers, Jarek.
Jay Levitt
on 01 Mar 10Sometimes, though, people outgrow your simplicity.
—[email protected], 1989-2001
Jarek Sygitowicz
on 01 Mar 10I don’t like the word “simplicity” to be honest. It’s used to much. People use it left and right and think it’s the ultimate goal of every tool, piece of software etc.
I think that when we say “simple” we think “elegant, well designed, easy to understand, clean”.
This kind of simplicity is limitless and therefore users have very hard time to outgrow it :)
Also – we all must understand that when designing business software you are not allowed to give people something that does not solve the whole business problem. And business problems are rarely “simple” to solve.
cheers, Jarek.
Ben
on 01 Mar 10How long was Twitter around before NOONE ‘got it’? A long time. Even now, only 5% of the people who use Twitter really get it. To dismiss Buzz for being too confusing after it only being around for a month is just wrong.
Gavin Logan
on 01 Mar 10I think there is a similar problem with Google Wave: I could use it for anything, so I end up using it for nothing.
Brian
on 02 Mar 10Kinda like Google Wave..Cool..but damn, can I use it efficiently?
mattmcknight
on 02 Mar 10I’m using Buzz much more than Twitter as client. Twitter IS a bit of an annoyance to try and follow the tacked on @reply business. That said, I read a bunch of Twitter feeds as RSS in Google Reader, but that’s really not about Twitter, it’s just short blogs and pithy quotes.
I really had no “Huh?” moment with Buzz, unlike Wave. But now, having used Buzz, I can see where some of the Wave features would be nice.
Jarek Sygitowicz
on 02 Mar 10Gents,
Today I couldn’t help myself but to write a short blog post about “simple” and “easy”. I hope that it’s ok to post a link to it here?
Frankerson P
on 02 Mar 10Buzz had one feature too many…the ‘jump into your inbox and make more noise’ feature. That caused me to turn it off right away and I don’t intend to try it now.
The simplicity of Twitter and the length limit on messages is what sets it apart on the Web right now.
Paul Montwill
on 02 Mar 10I am bit tired of all these new social media “solutions”. There is so much of it around including Google Wave and Google Buzz. We are bombarded by NEW stuff all the time – yesterday we put Digg button on our sites, today we are adding a Retweet & Facebook button and tomorrow Google Buzz. What will be a day after tomorrow? SocialMix button that will add our posts to 324 social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Buzz, Wave, Gmail, Docs, RSS…. :)
And we pay even less attention to all of this – how can you follow 2000 people on Twitter? :))
This discussion is closed.