Andi Narvaez: Re-learning PR

Whether launching right around Valentine’s Day was part of Google’s strategy for Google Buzz remains an unanswered question; however, after turning Google Buzz back on to see its progress, I caught two “buzzes” (is that what we’re calling them?) that made me post an update to my followers:

If there is something this whole Google Buzz episode has taught us, it is that the community of early adapters that is connected by social media REALLY wants to see things improve and move forward for everyone . Whether or not they will use this product themselves is irrelevant… someone else might find that it’s the perfect fit and that is reason enough.

I played around with Google Buzz today… I won’t regurgitate everything that is already being said out there, but I will post a link to a good conversation about the service e that unfolded (on GBuzz) after Steve Rubel (@steverubel) posted his initial reaction. And if you care to, check out what people are saying on Twitter now.

I spent a few days of my COM 107 class talking to my students about social media. My point was to help them see the light and encourage them to get involved in the social media space because, let’s face it, we’re not ahead of the curve anymore. To illustrate, Mashable and TechCrunch are mashing and crunching up dozens of new blog posts on a daily basis, which — correct me if I’m wrong — means we are all technically dropping the ball and having to pick it back up constantly.

Yesterday I caught a guest blog post on TwitTip (some great Twitter 101 gems in this blog by the way) about Twitter backgrounds and why I should change mine. I had intended to update my Twitter background some time ago but I never got around to doing it because I wanted to list some of my other social network accounts; however, due to the nature of social media, I have yet to come up with the ONE list of my social networks. Since Twitter backgrounds are JPG images, I didn’t have to go back to Photoshop every time to update my ever-growing, ever-changing list of social networks. I think I’m not alone in this.

No joke. The world population is 6,706,993,152 according to a July 2008 estimate. So the iPhone App store hitting one billion downloads is pretty significant, especially considering the fact that the it has only been a little more than two years since the iPhone was first introduced and less than a year since the iPhone 3G and the App Store were launched.

Today was Google’s.

Everywhere I turned, the one thing I kept hearing people talking about was the new Google Latitude feature on mobile Google maps and iGoogle gadgets. The service is available in 27 countries and allows users to let others know where in the world they are located. If you choose to opt-in (because that would be the only way Google could ever get away with this) you can use Latitude to find friends and communicate with them via SMS, Google Talk or simply by dialing their phone number.

I just saw this on Life Hacker (catching up with my feed) and thought that it was both cool and brilliant. For the price of an envelope and a stamp, you can get stickers for your keyboard and become a Gmail keyboard-shortcut wiz. And if you’re not already using Gmail, it might be time for you to start to. Anyone who can bring stickers back has the right idea. And anyone who can get you to direct mail yourself gets props.

After reading articles in The New York Times, Wired and GQ it’s becoming clear that Facebook Connect will trascend and surely be a huge step in the direction of blurring the barriers to entry and access that currently stand in the way of users’ seamless experience with the web. The best by-product of this new development could be, in my opinion, simplicity and what can be achieved when things not only fall into place but when they so in harmony.