Guest Post: Is Google Buzz an Ideal Approach to Taking on Facebook and Twitter?

Note: while I don't agree with this post completely, it provides some interesting analysis.  Will Buzz be a useful tool for competing with Twitter/Facebook?  I would hypothesize that the average age of Gmail users is much younger than email in general. I also think that looking at the market as some how divided between Facebook/Twitter/Gmail is inaccurate; don't most people subscribe to at least two?  I know I have all three.

 Post by Vincent Ni, writing from Oxford, UK

Gmail, the world’s third-largest electronic mail service unveiled its own “Google approach to sharing” with Google Buzz's release on Tuesday. However, Google’s stock did not perform as well as Google had hoped on Tuesday.

Google Buzz is a Twitter-like social networking application through which users can follow their friends and share updates. Many believe that Google Buzz is aimed to take on its competitors Twitter and Facebook, and is also believed to be closely tied with Google’s mobile ambitions.

Online social networking sites have been blooming since 2007. In the UK, while merely 17% internet users used the social networking sites in 2007, the figure jumped to 49% in 2009.

One of the questions that Google Buzz raises is that whether Google Buzz can lure users away from Facebook and Twitter. According to the Pew Internet report issued early this month, we find (unsurprisingly) that while 72% of young adults are on social networking sites, only 40% of 30+ adults use them. But who's using email? Although there is no specific data on Gmail users, looking at the demographics of email in general can offer some insight into the specifics for Gmail. The 2009 Oxford Internet Survey found that email is particularly popular among middle-aged and employed individuals, whereas social networking is particularly popular among students.

There is a clear demographic mismatch between the likely users of Gmail and those that use social networking.

So, in summary, if Google really wants to take on its social networking competitors, Google Buzz is not an ideal approach, simply because Gmail and Social Networking have different target customers groups, although there is of course a degree of overlap.