I think Google killed Twitter today. With the launch of Google Buzz they punched Twitter in the face and exploited their weaknesses and quietly set the scene for subsequent creeping infiltration into Microsoft’s stronghold in the enterprise market. Buzz is a big deal.
Google’s Buzz is presented as a simple rival to Twitter. It shows up discreetly as a tab in Gmail, will play nicely with other social media platforms and allows users to automatically follow/be followed by people within their existing email contact database. Responses are presented in the Gmail inbox which means that for most users there may be no need for dedicated platforms such as TweetDeck and Seesmic.
The problem with Google Buzz is that it’ll make our job as social media marketers more difficult. Twitter is effectively easy to create campaigns for. Buzz is going to be fairly difficult outside the adwords medium. Google stock should be going up big time. They continuously role out the best in class products.