Pay Per Follower! Google Paying Mashable to Promote Google Buzz?
Posted by rish | Social Media | No Comments
I can’t help but think that Mashable was being paid to promote Google Buzz. Being an avid reader of Mashable, one of the popular blogs, I have noticed quite a lot of posts about Google Buzz. It’s not unusual for a blog like the Mashable to cover latest news in social media but it seems like Mashable want their readers to use Google Buzz. So, do we have a Pay Per Follower program in here? Ever since the launch of Google Buzz, there’s been more criticism than praise for Google Buzz, Mashable’s been covering the both, positive as well negative feedback but it seems like they’re doing bit more than “coverage”. Here are some facts that reveal the association:
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Mashable was first to:
- Introduce Share on Google Buzz buttons
- Google Buzz counters, showing number of “buzzes” for a post.
- Mashable had a contest for users, giving away Nexus One to the best “Buzzer”
- On Mashable navigation, Google Buzz has got a separate category with a logo while the likes of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are sub categories of “Social Media”. And no other category has managed to get a logo.
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Mouse over it and see your browser status bar. Link will not be buzz.google.com/mashable it will rather be something like:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imgad?id=adTrackingCodeHere
This clearly shows the reason for all the love that Mashable has for Google Buzz.
While it certainly is NOT wrong to promote a product and get paid for it but at least mark it as “Advertisement” instead of promoting it in disguise. And yes, I’m writing this because I hate Google Buzz (the way it is by now) but I love Mashable.
Here is full screenshot from Mashable as at the time of posting, click to enlarge it and see separate category and category logo:

Google Buzz could open new ways for spammers to spam your Gmail. Having a Google Profile ID is very much like having your email address be searchable by your name. To have an identity on Google Buzz, you need to have a Google Profile and that’s where problem lies. You can only have your email id as profile username. For example if your Gmail address is my.name@gmail.com, your profile id will be my.name and your profile link will look like this: http://www.google.com/profiles/my.name. This puts your Gmail address open for spammers.
Google Buzz is still being rolled out to Gmail users and is available to hardly 2% of Gmail users just after the release. There’s been mixed response in media regarding Google Buzz while Microsoft and Yahoo have claimed they have done this long ago and there’s nothing new in Google Buzz. A common user, however, is still confused whether or not Google Buzz was worth their time when they still had similar, more polished and more familiar services in Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. Here is our list of 5 great possibilities with Google Buzz:
Google Buzz is the latest buzz in social media. It’s Google’s take on Social Networking, a potential answer to Facebook and Twitter. Google buzz will be available within Gmail and you’ll be able to access it in very much the same way as you access your emails. Your Gmail connections, whom you email quite often, become your followers and you can share status updates, images, videos and other resources with them from within Gmail. Google buzz also supports services like Picasa, Flickr, Twitter and Google Reader but does NOT support Facebook.