Everyone is talking about Google Buzz it seems like. I started to use the service myself today more in depth. I have to say, it’s pretty intuitive. It’s a great way to share information and updates with your friends and other users. However, there are a few things that I’m not 100% on board with.
Privacy:
I’m still working out the kinks in the privacy aspect of Buzz. Yes, I am aware that I can limit the privacy of my posts and such, but what if someone, who is public, starts responding to my post, does that come up in search? Probably not, but I’m still concerned about it. Or, conversely, if my friends wish to remain private, yet they respond to my public post, should that be a concern of theirs or mine? Another piece of privacy that I’m concerned about is search. Yes, my profile is set to private, yet it still can be searched for, along with everything I post, if you’re good at searching. Does my email come up in that search, or my other contact information?
Frequency:
Yes, Buzz is a valuable tool for communicating with your friends and other users whom you share common interest with. However, what is the frequency of posting? How fast should you return comments? Do I share my time with Twitter? Of course, these are questions that will be resolved in the coming months by monitoring the use by users. But, what I see happening is people are anxious to use the service and promote them on it. Which, is good, however, it adds another level of social media, on top of the already saturated market.
Integration:
Google, during the release of the product, did state that two-way integration isn’t here just yet for Buzz and it may not come at all. However, I do believe in order to make this more useful for the social media crowd and basic consumer usage, you will need the app to communicate both ways with other platforms, specifically Facebook and Twitter. Otherwise, you are limiting growth and functionality of the site.
Let me be clear, I am sold on the whole idea of Google Buzz. I like where Google is taking their social network. However, I’m concerned with certain things that are in place right now and the practice of using it. Like I said before, I’m sure these issues will be addressed very soon and more functionality will be added into it. After all, it was just released a few days ago. I’ll keep using it and see what the trends say. Who knows, maybe I’ll only use Buzz instead of Gmail.