I know that it takes times to “see the light” when it comes to new products and services. But since pretty much everything offered on the Web is in constant beta state, if we, the users, don’t do things “Nero-style” and give companies a brutally honest thumbs up or down verdict sooner rather than later, then we miss out on the opportunity to shape the products and services that will later come to shape our reality (Twitter, FTW). So here are my two cents. I am an inbox Nazi. I delete and respond to emails in the constant pursuit of the zero-inbox utopia. Seriously, I’m pretty sure the way to finally reach Enlightenment is through an empty inbox. I ADORE Gmail and email is my top priority. I couldn’t believe that in an effort to force themselves into the social network market, Google would put a “Buzz” link right under my sacred “inbox” link and then tell me that I have more than 100 things to look at when it has taken me all day to respond to 5 emails. Talk about a lack of research and understanding of your publics. So essentially, I have been forced to ignore Buzz. To me it seemed to fall under the “fruit flies buzz around” rather than the “word-of-mouth” definition of the word. I resent this. My friends online are bright people and I just called them fruit flies because Google put out a half-assed product. My affair with Google is intimate. I collaborate using Google Docs, I organize my life with Google Calendars, and I read and learn from the blogs I subscribe to on Google Reader.  My affair with Facebook and Twitter is a little more scandalous and public. For Google to just go balls to the wall with Google Buzz is unacceptable and a huge disservice to their brand and certainly to the rest of us. February 11, 2010 UPDATE: Thanks to Aaron Brazell (@technosailor) for a solid post on Why Google Buzz is the wrong product for Google to try to shove down our throats and for the key to turning it off:

I enabled Buzz on my Gmail account and then promptly disabled it (you too can disable it, if it’s already turned on for you, by clicking on the “turn off Buzz” link in the footer of your Gmail account).

My plan is to define social / digital media and to position the phenomenon in terms of the bigger picture — namely, how it has changed media, advertising, marketing, public relations, politics, news, education, interpersonal communication, business…

Then, I want to show them just how and where the change is taking place. Here is where I would love to get your help. Below is a list of social media categories I created using the Conversation Prism and my own brain. I could go online and fish out specific examples of each to show my students but instead, I wondered if you have or know someone who has a great Flickr profile, YouTube channel, DocStoc archive, etc., etc. that I could share with my students. If so, let me know in the comments or feel free to send me a tweet (@andinarvaez) with the category and a link.

Thank you in advance! And please, feel free to share!

• Picture-sharing
• Livecasting
• Wikis
• Audio / Music sharing
• Events
• Documents / Content
• Customer service
• Video-sharing
• Location
• Reviews / Ratings
• Social networks
• Forums
• SMS / VoIP
• Lifestreams
• Weblog
• Video blog
• Collaboration / Crowdsourced content
• Comments
• Social bookmarks
• Social blogs / Microblogs
• Social News
• Online communities
• Virtual Worlds
• Game-sharing
• Information aggregators
• Email
• Instant messaging

Flickr user Rufus Gefangenen

I wish I had taken bets back in the day to try to guess which of the futuristic gadgets featured on the show would make it in the real world first.

To be honest, my money would have been on the housekeeper robots.

However, yesterday I caught a tweet about 12seconds.tv, which is basically a video version of Twitter. Brilliant concept. Today I read a post on Mashable about  YouTube adding social networking capabilities. Right on. And minutes before I posted this I learned about Fliggo.

So I was wrong on my Jetsons prediction. And I should have known better. There was no way that cleaning one’s dwelling could ever be more important than communicating with family, friends, peers… people.

I remember when Facebook first came out with its video application. I found it odd to see a freeze frame of an unflattering close-up of someone’s face in my inbox. From the looks of it, it may be my own face on someone else’s inbox pretty soon – all unflattery-looking.

None of this is breaking news. I’ve seen plenty of blogs that post videos but I do wonder just how much this will catch on, in lieu of  the written word and for personal communication. Remember, this post was originally about The Jetsons family and their microcosm.

Afterall, video is faster and it may solve the problem, at the receiving end, of not being able to pick up on the sender’s tone, mood, etc. due to the lack of face-to-face interaction.

Video, for better or for worse?