Who's Buzzing?

[blessingx]

Have on my iPhone, but not in my laptops browser yet.

[blessingx]

crickets

[Salt Peanuts]

[jinp6301]

Google Buzz

[deepak]

I suspect quite a few Head-Casers post while buzzed

[tkam]

just what the world needs, another whatever the fuck.

+1

[mypasswordis]

So uh, what is this and how is it different from or related to or whatever the fuck to Wave? I added it but I have no idea what it's for, same for Wave, which is how I'm making the relation.

[blessingx]

So uh, what is this and how is it different from or related to or whatever the fuck to Wave? I added it but I have no idea what it's for, same for Wave, which is how I'm making the relation.

First impression: biggest difference with Wave is this is usable.

[Knuckledragger]

I'll bet Dom is buzzing.

[blessingx]

Not sure I agree, however...

"Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That

[CherryBomb]

This thing is a stinking pile of shit. Definitely not ready for primetime. What the emos in Mt. View thinking?

[blessingx]

Are those the same emos as in Mtn. View?

[CherryBomb]

No. They are the ones in Mt. View.

[episiarch]

Multiple privacy concerns, and some other issues, thoughtfully discussed in Google Buzz: Not fit for purpose

[aardvark baguette]

Haven't people been able to chat inside of Gmail for years? Plus there's the whole email thing.

[Salt Peanuts]

i don't really get all of these social thingamajigs. i guess i'm an old fuddy-duddy, but i don't need to keep track of what every person i've ever met is doing every second of the day.

QFT

On a related note, some folks at work were astonished that I don't have a Facebook page.

[Dusty Chalk]

*(n+1)

"don't need" is an understatement WRT my feelings on the subject.

[blessingx]

Believe me I have reservations on some of the choices Goog has made here (at least in what I've explored), but I think Buzz (even with that name) is trying to be more than just a public social tool. So even if you write off the Facebook/Twitterish aspects, it seems they're trying to fix certain IM/email divisions and collaboration problems. It's a simplified Wave platform (more linear and email-like) which possibly has business uses (better group IMing and archiving, etc.). With so little documentation it's not only a bit of a pain to use, it's currently an experiment in screwing over your friends security, so I hope changes get made quickly, but I'd hold off thinking it's only as Googles Twitter. Or at least hold off until it finds it niche. If it becomes mainly a public social tool those other uses may retreat (though that hasn't happened to IM). And those security mistakes don't bode well for non-public social plans. We'll see.

[mypasswordis]

Seems like right now it's just a way for people to have some of the functionality of Facebook/Twitter without having to use Facebook or Twitter? But I already have the latter two, and they both do things Buzz can't. Still not quite sure I see the point.

[blessingx]

Just curious, what does Twitter do that Buzz can't?

[mypasswordis]

You can view trending topics and follow whoever you want, provided the other party has not made their account private or they have and they accept you. Also I'm not sure if there is a way to block people on Buzz, there might be and I just haven't figured it out yet. Not that I've tried very hard.

[blessingx]

Yeah, we'll see if they rely on general search or develop a trending topics system. I'm not sure about blocking either. Haven't seen anything for it. There's a lot on the security side of things that isn't obvious. The level of publishing security settings is greater in Buzz though, so you have far greater control over who sees what. I'd say out of the gate Buzz does significantly more than Twitter - remove 140 character limit, embed videos, links, and images, private and public group conversations, etc. It's a far more sophisticated platform, but Twitters success is likely due to its simplicity. If you ignore the biggie - expected use case, for a second, conceptually, they're different beasts. A Twitter stream is either private or public and people join and may be blocked. A Buzz post may be completely public (Google indexed, etc.), private to all your contacts/group list, or private to a subset. A stream makes less sense when you have five posts and none of them are viewable by the same people. Facebook is kinda similar, but last time I was on it far less granular. But again much of this confuses me. Not sure how your contacts publishing settings affect viewing your posts and how contacts of contacts interact. Would have been nice of Google worked a bit on documentation before launching a product that conceivably outs a friends contact info.

[mypasswordis]

I'd say out of the gate Buzz does significantly more than Twitter - remove 140 character limit, embed videos, links, and images, private and public group conversations, etc.

Agreed. But Facebook fixes all of that. Seems Buzz can do a bit more than I thought, maybe I'll play with it for a couple more days and see if it clicks. Not many other people I know are using it, which doesn't help. Someone Buzzed a funny link yesterday: Angry Norwegians in scuba gear chase after Google Street View car Boing Boing

[Dusty Chalk]

Trident is the new shovel.

[jinp6301]

I think one of the main points of Buzz is that your social network is already built in (due to gmail or whatnot), so theres very little stopping a novice user from using it right away