What exactly does Buzz offer that Facebook doesn't? What kind of recognition will it have?
This is all very interesting, but it's _far_ too early for this kind of hyperbole.
It has been done before. Do you remember Prodigy? CompuServe? AOL? MySpace?
For that matter, how often do you use the search engines Excite, Lycos, AltaVista, or whatever Microsoft's search engine was before Bing?
Users go where the user experience is pleasant. Advertisers look for click-throughs, and try to estimate eyeball-minutes for the major sites, and Google has a fair chance of beating Facebook with Buzz. Not overnight, but steadily. Many of my Facebook friends haven't seen the Google Buzz roll-out yet, but they have seen the new Facebook homepage roll-out, and they don't like it.
AFTER EDIT: And it occurs to me that Calacanis's main statement, that Facebook lost value, is hard to test while Facebook is not publicly traded. But Google's value is easy to track in the stock market. If this move looks stupid to Google investors, their behavior will show that.
Me-too or even evolutionary won't cut it for draining Facebook of its users. It's got to provide signficantly more value immediately upon signing up. So far, it doesn't.
The Facebook social graph is established by people you meet in person and who decide later to send you a friend invite, or people you knew at some point who saw your picture on someone else's friends list. The strength of the connection is determined by Facebook based on how often you interact with or stalk that person.
The Gmail social graph is people you actually communicate with, and is more dynamic in the sense that you probably communicate with more people on a day-to-day basis then you interact/stalk with on Fb.
The question is, which of these makes for a more relevant following system, and for what kind of user?
Perhaps one way to think of it is that people who are all about sharing pictures will prefer Fb, but those who are all about sharing ideas will prefer Buzz. Which target demographic has more income?
A very good question. That's about what I'm thinking as I consider making Buzz my primary channel for interacting with my friends. I'm considering "ideas" more than "income," but I'm not looking for games or cute pictures.
AFTER EDIT:
As I just posted on Facebook, in a thread discussing the New York Times article about Buzz, "rebuilding a whole social graph is a bother. But MIGRATING a social graph to a site that is at least as useful and less annoying might be something much easier to do. I am glad to see some thoughtful competition in this space, the better to kee Facebook honest."
I see some other comments on my Facebook threads and here on HN along the lines of using Facebook to first establish a network of friends, and then using the Next Great Thing in Social Networking to winnow that group of friends to get a dense network of closest friends. That might work for me.
I think it'd be interesting to see how many NEW social network users Buzz will bring in, just because of the simple fact that it makes setting up a brand new network easy as pie (vs FB and having to build up to a nice little community of friends).
Also, in general, no one ever likes facebook UI updates, yet they never leave.
Yeah. Or Friendster. Of course it could happen, but my point is that it is too early to tell what impact Buzz will have.
"Google has a fair chance of beating Facebook with Buzz"
Agreed. But that time is not now and the hyperbole is unwarranted. As you say, steady gains are a possible -- and most likely -- way for Buzz to unseat Facebook.