Google Buzz API adds Track and some improvements
Let's say you're really interested in coffee and tea and would like to know every time someone talks about them. You've been able to do that for the web with Google Alerts. Now you will be able to do the same thing for Google Buzz with our latest feature: Track.
Context & Ripple Effects
Buzz has spent 2010 being pried loose from Gmail: after the spring privacy-settings scramble, Google integrated it into Gmail for mobile in April and expanded mobile device support by May. Today's move works the API side of that push — talk of offering Buzz independently of Gmail earlier this year implied a standalone product, and a standalone product needs its own discovery layer, which is what Track supplies.
The name carries history: 'Track' was a beloved keyword-following feature on another social platform whose disappearance, per discussion at the time, triggered open-source clones, unconfirmed comeback rumors, and public denials before Fred Wilson claimed it would return. Google shipping Track under its own brand revives demand those episodes proved out — and sits alongside Google's broader real-time build-out this year, including the Caffeine faster search index and questions about whether Google Reader had turned on a firehose.
First-order effects
- Developers on the Google Buzz API can now build keyword-level topic alerts into their clients, giving users Google Alerts-style monitoring of coffee-and-tea-type interests directly inside social streams.
Second-order effects
- Third-party social clients weighing platforms gain a concrete differentiator: Buzz now offers the track-style feature whose absence elsewhere created an open-source clone market, giving those builders a reason to route topic-following through Google's API instead.
Third-order effects
- If Google keeps exposing real-time query surfaces — Caffeine for web indexing, a possible Reader firehose, Track on Buzz — keyword subscription stops being any one network's signature feature and becomes commodity infrastructure developers expect from every platform.
The trend: Social platforms are racing to expose real-time topic tracking as API plumbing, turning keyword alerts from a single network's differentiator into baseline developer infrastructure.