During last fall's debut of Google Wave, which seemed to be a launch of a complicated solution in search of a problem, I was immediately struck by the overwhelming nature of the platform, which inundated me with update after update and parallel conversations all vying for my attention. Not unsurprisingly, I stepped back from the product, as many people did - hoping it would improve in simplicity and utility over time, eventually becoming a product I could use for collaboration and real-time messaging. But that day never came. Like many products, much of Wave ended up being all about itself - as people first were attracted to its novelty, and later, many threads were all about how to best utilize it, with tips and tricks. It was there because it could be, not because it should be.

Wednesday's announcement that Google Wave has been discontinued as a stand-alone product is not dramatic for almost all people, as it wasn't being used all that much, beyond tire kicking, as people seeking social outlets went one way, and those seeking collaboration stuck to more traditional tools. Wave didn't kill e-mail or any social tool, and pieces of it will live on in other Google products as the company says they have learned from the episode.

With rumors of Google Me flying about, and Google Buzz still not having entirely recovered from some early misguided press and unclear utility in a social world dominated by Facebook and Twitter, it is logical to wonder, for some, if the Mountain View owned aggregation and sharing site will follow Wave to an early end. I would not be so fast to reach this conclusion, even if Google hasn't done as solid a job in marking product milestones the way they have finally determined how to make big splash launch announcements. The product, as best as I can tell, sees regular updates, with more features in the queue, and has a good, if not overwhelming, level of use from casual to devoted participants. And it seems very logical that even if Google doubles down with a new product like "Me", as rumored, that Buzz would play a major part in its development - as would the company's expanded Google Profiles.

At its end, Google Wave, for Google, was as much an application environment as it was a destination. Thus, its closure should not have elicited any more of a response than if we learned Google had abandoned the Go programming language, or Closure tools. But Wave wasn't hyped as a development platform or a bucket of features. It was thought of as potentially disrupting e-mail, and as recently as the South By Southwest conference (SXSW), the company's GMail team was being asked questions about competing with Wave for attention and resources at Google, and the panel called it "a leapfrog project" for the future Web, not today's Web.

Google Buzz is not a leapfrog project. It's hard for Google to force a leapfrog when it is they who are playing catchup in the social space. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has repeatedly stated the world does not need a Facebook clone, but it does seriously need a real alternative. Today, Buzz is not that alternative, and the team's developers never positioned it as a Facebook killer, Twitter killer or anything of that nature - instead focusing on building the product on open standards for sharing of content, and we have seen the Buzz buttons populate the Web in a way that less-successful products, FriendFeed included, never did.

Multiple sites, including TechCrunch and GigaOM, have reported Google has a new head of social in the company's VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra. Vic was present at blogger pre-briefings of Google Buzz back in February, and participated in the official launch on stage at their Mountain View campus, so he is very close to the team. Additionally, as I've previously mentioned, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is particularly keen on Buzz's success, and the company most certainly does not want to lose even more page views and advertising opportunities to social competitors.

That said, Google Buzz hasn't immediately captured the imagination of users and seen dramatic growth some have expected for it, although statistics for its use are practically impossible to find. Even as Google said it was not intended to be a head-on competitor to Facebook, it has instead been regarded internally as an extension of Gmail, and that likely isn't the best place to have an active social network, even as Schmidt says the team "is doing very well".

Following Buzz's debut and initial privacy bumps, the team discussed introducing new features as regularly as once a week - and visible introductions, ranging from the official Buzz buttons to integrated comment and like histories by account, have popped up, but the fanfare from Google has been minimal - as the company continues to do a less than stellar job of continuing to get press from iterative updates.

In a discussion I had with Google employees recently about why they choose to stay at the company instead of going to an IPO-bound alternative, most notably Facebook and Twitter, one responded that working at Google was like working with future technology that was anywhere from 12 to 18 months away, and that, like light reaching the Earth from stars extremely far away, we are working on technology that is itself somewhat dated.

With one foot deep in speculation and the other on more firm ground, I can't help but believe some of the relative quiet around Buzz from the Google team is related to their being focused on something else that leverages their work in a big way - the next social volley, whatever it turns out to be. But Buzz isn't going to get eighty-sixed only six months after launch. I think what we are seeing instead is the emergence out of the "Trough of Disillusionment" so popularized by Gartner's Hype cycle, and a slope toward productivity. When it climbs that slope, it might still be called Buzz, or it may have a new name, but it isn't going away soon.

You can, of course, find me on Buzz here: http://www.google.com/profiles/louisgray.

Today, by all accounts, managing the massive number of users Twitter has seen flocking to the service has been a challenge for the company's relatively small (but growing) support team. As you can imagine, the number of requests to eliminate spam, stop abusive behavior, or reopen locked out accounts is likely tremendous, and that's not even getting into the challenge of getting one's account verified, a rare privilege for a select few non-celebrities.

Practically the only time you see the service's support team pop up is if an account is disabled. It's possible a new process is being put in place to provide a warning to users who have stepped out of line, putting them "on notice". A new account, called @twitteronnotice, says cryptically "You're On Notice!", featuring an avatar of Uncle Sam glaringly pointing his finger in your direction. The account even calls itself "Minus One", a common Internet tally for somebody or something being modded down by the community. (e.g. +1 and -1)


Get enough negative karma associated with your account, and you might see your account go on notice. While no public details are yet available for this private account, it could be a way for the company to try and avoid user attrition through aggressive account deletions, and put accounts in something of a holding pattern for violating the terms of service.

The account follows an interesting mix of Twitter employees, including Troy Holden (@troy), from the Support team, Jillian West (@jillyface), a business analyst at Twitter, Timothy Yip (@tyip) legal counsel, and Matt Graves (@mgrooves) on the communications team. That team, with representatives on legal and support to enforce the rules, and business and comm to handle any fallout, looks like a good group to pow-wow and decide just what activity and what people will go on notice. As mentioned in the other story from tonight, @twitteronnotice is also connected to @twittershoutout, so it's not all bad news.

As with the other story, I reached out tonight to Sean Garrett (@sg) in the Twitter communications department for clarification, and haven't heard back, so we may find out how the company plans to use this account as part of their support and rules enforcement process.

Want to send shoutouts to your peeps on Twitter? If the emergence of a rather official-looking, but private, account on Twitter is any guide, the microblogging powerhouse is readying just that, which could fit an intriguing space that goes beyond the user-initiated practices of retweets and the rapidly popular, and then later fatigued, practice of Follow Friday. While details are so far lacking, the account (@twittershoutout), says you can "contribute your shoutouts to peeps", which I assume would deliver the ability to provide kudos to fellow users in a way that works around the service's practice of obscuring @replies to people you don't follow.

The account features the official Twitter mascot silhouetted on a medallion, and thus far, only follows two other accounts, including the internal Twitter account for employees (@teamteam) and a second account, intriguing in its own right, @twitteronnotice, which dubs itself as "Minus One". More on that later.


In the last few months, Twitter has increasingly leveraged its righthand sidebar, showing not just statistics on your activity, but adding suggested people to follow, and your own mentions, direct messages, favorites and retweets. Only retweets performed in Twitter's official way, and not the old RT style, are counted.

Speculating, I think it's possible that people (and brands) could send you shoutouts, which would be displayed in parallel to your favorites and retweets, which you could display, much like badges, on your account, when friends send you kudos.

The @twittershoutout account is followed by 175 people so far, despite the account's being private. Unsurprisingly, while I didn't go through all those following, every single one I checked was verified as a Twitter employee, so it looks as official as it gets. The account is also listed under "official accounts operated by Twitter" on lists that watch the company closely, even if it is not (yet) included in Twitter's own list of "more Twitter accounts". It is also oddly included in one list for the "Twitter support team".

I sent direct messages to a few folks at Twitter, including Sean Garrett, on the company's communications team tonight, and haven't heard back yet on this account or that of @twitteronnotice, so there is always the possibility this is more smoke than fire, but it looks like new features are coming our way soon. Considering Twitter's emphasis on brands and celebrities, just imagine how many shoutouts Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher are going to get!

Unless you've mastered the art of not blinking, you probably miss updates from connections on Twitter. Even the most attentive of people will have gaps in their attention to the real time stream. As Twitter has become a prominent place to share links and point followers to news and sites of interest, new services have arisen to find the best of what you may have missed. Among the newest, in early beta, is a site called KeyTweet, which finds relevant tweets that contain links, based on keywords in the streams of those you follow.

KeyTweet, like Cadmus and My6sense's offerings before it, aims to find a relevancy filter for Twitter, to surface important updates and hide the more trivial. But instead of using implicit activity, as my6sense does, or collapsing duplicates and finding conversations as The Cadmus does, KeyTweet finds popular topics that people you follow tweeted about, and brings tweets that match multiple keywords to the top of your stream, sorted by relevance.


For example, in my stream this evening, I saw many updates on Foursquare, Posterous and Android, as well as the highlight of the day - the arrival of Sean and Laurie Percival's new baby. As many people, myself included, highlighted the infant's debut, Percival effectively became a "trending topic" among those I follow.

Many people have begged Twitter for trending topics among your friends, and they have seemingly instead opted for geographically chunked data. KeyTweet, like The Cadmus and Twazzup Reader, fills that gap, analyzing your stream live. As new matches to top keywords flow into your stream, they too get a chance to sit atop your feed.


"Key" tweets are displayed with the matching keywords, includes a list of other people who have tweeted the link, and the option to provide explicit feedback to the application, indicating whether you "like" or "dislike" the entry. You can even retweet from the site. The more you like, the more the service is personalized for you.

Tweets shown in Keytweet are organized not in chronological order, but in order of importance - just as my6sense has done for the iPhone. The app shows tabs for top entries in the last week or month, and also the option to sort by time, but they are not yet live. I can only assume future product enhancements will convert those tabs from concept to reality.

You can find the key tweets you may have missed in your stream by heading to KeyTweet.com. In the age of information overload, relevancy that is personalized is becoming critical. Their approach is intriguing.

Disclosure: my6sense is a client of Paladin Advisors Group, where I am Managing Editor of New Media. My6sense is an assumed competitor to KeyTweet.