buzz1As a user of twitter, google reader, picasa, youtube, and blog writing, I was initially intrigued about the concept of Google Buzz. It is basically an aggregated update about what google thinks makes up my online ‘life’. Photos of me, articles I like, random twitterish thoughts all can be pushed to people who subscribe automatically. Then they can comment directly on them or pass them on to their subscriber list.

However there is a significant problem I believe. My social network is not the same as my gmail email list. I might email random people in my industry, or for a one-time information request. These aren’t really the people that I would want to keep up with in their daily life.

Twitter has an extremely low barrier of entry. You can subscribe to the twitter feed of pretty much anyone except a few private tweeters. Follow famous celebs or people around the world with a similar interest and there isn’t really much more attached to that. They can follow you, or write you a tiny direct message, but the etiquette doesn’t dictate that they need to.

Facebook is also pretty free and open. Old classmates, or coworkers can be pretty much added without second thought. You can know someone for a week or two and become their facebook friend. I personally find the facebook message to be a light way to say hello to people who are too busy to IM, but also not as important as an email or phone call. I also quite like some of the layout system, (although finding out what people are FANS of, or FRIENDS with adds needless clutter)

Then you have the people you email, and specifically users of gmail service. To me, this is not my social circle even though it might cover most of my inner circle. It is quite small, and even if 20% of people I follow post things on a regular basis, it still looks very bare. I also believe many people are hesitant on what to put on their “buzz” because they don’t have a good grasp of who is receiving it.

I do quite like using “shared items” from my reader rss feed. This allows me to read various articles and share the ones I like, perhaps with a comment or opinion. This already existed however inside the reader.google.com page. I was already following a few other ‘shared’ feeds from what other people suggested I read. With google buzz I suppose this circle is a little bit bigger.

It also grabs twitter feeds. It is only one directional however, so if I want to reach both Buzz and Twitter followers, I need to post on twitter, and then there is a huge delay before it gets imported. Which kinda sucks

So, that’s what I’ve seen of Google Buzz so far. I have not used the mobile app with it’s location based “buzzing” which seems to be quite interesting. In a crowded area I can envision lots of random people “buzzing” and it could be quite neat to hear what people say in my area. The frequency that this scenario comes up I believe will be quite low however in all but the most crowded cities.

Google Buzz. An enhanced reader.google with potentially some promise to be near twitter. I still find it really awkward to use email as an identifer to follow someone I don’t normally email therefore I don’t believe it will catch on in casual crowds.