I recently had the opportunity to shoot some photos of local band, Chasing Friday.

Despite only forming three years ago in Sept 2007, front-man Phill Black, Neil Broers, Gus Warden and Nico Mouissie, have already gathered local fame with their eclectic and quirky take on college rock. Their achievements already include their single, Campus Girl, being featured on the SL Magazine compilation, two of their music videos airing regularly on MNet and Mnet HD television, and winning the Cape Town leg of the RBF Battle of the Bands.

Check them out at:

• facebook.com/chasingfriday
• myspace.com/chasingfriday

In contrast to a week allegations of “internecine warfare among Microsoft’s established divisions and a dysfunctional corporate culture that squashes innovation” comes yet-another-innovative-Google-product, Google Buzz.  Google Buzz is Mountain View’s first convincing entry into Social Networking, that isn’t limited to merely an API.

Gina Trappani, posting on Smarterware, says it all: “This ain’t no Orkut.”. Google are very serious about taking down Twitter and Facebook.

Jason Calacanis, posting to his email list this morning, made it clear that he sees this as a major challenge to facebook:

1. Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years.

2. Facebook’s history is one filled with stealing other people’s
innovations and doing them better (i.e. Zuckerberg has stolen every
idea Evan Williams and the Twitter team have released). How ironic now
that Google has out “Facebooked” Facebook. Google

3. Google has excellent privacy record and Facebook is a disaster.
Most folks do not trust Zuckerberg and Facebook any more because of
their privacy record (filled with lawsuits) and because they steal
every good idea they see (i.e. Twitter’s innovations and FourSquare’s
checking in).

4. Google Buzz auto generates your network–this is MUCH better
process than Facebook’s.

5. Google Buzz is way faster than the sluggish Facebook–this is a
HUGE advantage.

6. Google Buzz puts relies and updates into your GMAIL as
threads–this is BRILLIANT and a HUGE advantage.

Perhaps Jason is spot on. It certainly does seem that Google has almost everything in place to flip the switch, and take over the Social Networking space.

• Status
  Google: Buzz Status and GTalk Status
  Facebook: Status
• Photos
  Google: Picassa,
  Facebook: Photos
• Videos
  Google: YouTube,
  Facebook: Videos
• Email
  Google: Gmail since 2004
  Facebook: Project Titan (not yet released)
• Instant Messaging
  Google: GTalk with XMPP/Jabber
  Facebook: Facebook Chat (XMPP just released)
• Applications
  Google: Not yet.
  Facebook: Farmville, and a few others.
• Media Sharing
  Google: Google Reader, YouTube
  Facebook: A mix of rss importing tools, and (possibly) the recently purchased FriendFeed.

The only problem, in the words of the imitable Reinhardt Zündorf, is: “This is lame, now I can’t find out which dog I am (via a five bullet questionnaire) and share it with my facebook friends”.