I’ve been playing around with Google Buzz for about a day now and have to say that I’m really confused as to what Google is trying to accomplish here.
On one hand, you can’t blame Google for attempting to make inroads in the social media space. Their Orkut service is relatively unknown in the United States and their most popular social tool, Google Reader, sadly hasn’t been adopted by nearly enough users. (I can’t tell you how much it pains me that people haven’t adopted RSS on massive levels.)
Using Google Buzz, I keep asking myself “why do I need this?” Buzz brings nothing new to me that I’m not already getting from Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or any other social networking aggregator. One of Buzz’s most touted features is it’s auto-adding of contacts you email on a frequent basis. Unfortunately for me, that included auto-following a spammer I was having it out with a couple of weeks back. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t want anyone building my personal network without my say.
Buzz offers no options to control the view of your stream, so you’re presented with a massive ongoing flow of information that can be overwhelming if following a few heavy social media users. Perhaps if Buzz was designed to mimic Reader, with a sidebar of your followed users you could group and filter, it would be a lot easier to navigate.
When I first read about Google integrating social into Gmail, I expected a service along the lines of Seesmic; a way to easily read and update my networks, filter users and topics of interest while offering me the ability to easily share and archive my favorites. Unfortunately, what we’re presented with thus far provides little value and leaves most people with more questions than answers. I’m not ready to call Buzz a flop, as one can never count Google out, but until Buzz offers features that I can’t live without, it’s just going to be an annoying list item in my Gmail inbox.
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