Google Buzz is a social networking tool from Google, designed to be integrated into Gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox. Buzz enables users to choose the content they want to share publicly with the world or privately with a group of friends for each post. Some tools like Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger and Twitter are already integrated.
Basically what I used it for, was mostly keeping track of my friends (Google suggested people I may want to follow and I clicked on the ones I wanted to be in coontact with) and I tried a bit of updating my 'followers'.
Turns out, it left me disappointed. I expected much more of it, perhaps because I am a Facebook and a Twitter user, and therefore I may have had high expectations. Regardless, the experience was somehow dissatisfying: my and my friends 'updates mostly had no comments, so potential for any kind of discussion is really low, thing people share are usually also published elsewhere (like Twitter – which is compatible with Buzz, Facebook, etc.) but the difference between other social networking sites and Google Buzz is in the context: Facebook, etc. have more stimulating environments – it's somehow logical that users “like” and comment each other's posts, but with Buzz it is just not that easy. I could hardly get anything more that a “like” from anyone.
Plus I have been using Google Reader for more than 2 year now and I am perfectly satisfied with what and how it enables content to be accessed. And now Buzz allows integration of these Reader posts, but it is just like having another Google Reader with more options in an unstimulating environment.
As you can see, I am not exactly 'thrilled' about Google Buzz, not to mention all the indignation Google Buzz caused with it's (more or less default) privacy settings, aptly addressed by Danah Boyd in her SXSW speech and some other newspaper reports like the Guardian, the Inquirer, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc.
Perhaps I am biased, but since I can't make any good use of Buzz, and due to my preference to using Gmail, Reader, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter separately and not in an nonfunctional conglomerate of all this functions, I will turn Google Buzz off.
Thank you for this short explanation of Google Buzz, Tina. I surely won't try it after what I've read. I suppose it is rather difficult to discover new and interesting social network groups when you already use Facebook and Twitter and I'm not surprised that you didn't like it.
OdgovoriIzbrišiWell Drazen, you are welcome, although I was (secretly) hoping someone will comment to prove me wrong ;)
OdgovoriIzbrišiBut as I said, I may be biased, but it's just not as functional as I expected it to be.
Well, Tina, I went to ''try'' Google Buzz just to see if I can prove you wrong as you said. :) But I must say I really can't do that, brcause I found the same insufficiencies as you mentioned. Although I have had Google Buzz from the point of it's integration into Gmail on, I didn't pay much attention to it untill now. But now that I have, I really don't know what the point of it is. Like you said, there is a lot of your friends' information that you can't find elsewhere (for example Facebook, Twitter etc.), so there is no need to search it there. As I could see, just a few of my contacts are using this tool, so there is not much published and the interaction is minimal. The concept is not so bad, but with the the overflow of different Internet tools, this one sorf of got ran over.
OdgovoriIzbrišiThe point is: it's not you, it's Google Buzz :)