log

11 Feb '10
@00:53

1. 

   Today I got Google Buzz in my gmail account (just like pretty much everyone else in the world it seems) and I got to play with it for a while. I think it’s much better thought out and executed than Wave was, there are a few things I like:

   • Integration With Email: one of the big flaws of Google Wave, it was a separate application and you never knew what was going on there if you didn’t manually go and check (the only notifier I ever saw was a Chrome extension). With Buzz you get an e-mail notification when there’s new activity on your items, and if you use the web interface you can very quickly tell “Buzzes” apart from regular e-mails by just seeing the distinctive icon.
     
   • Mobile Experience: great for a first iteration, at least on the iPhone (this is Google, they have enough mobile experience by now, but it’s still Buzz 1.0). You can geotag your “buzzes” and see a map of what people are saying nearby, or anywhere you drag the map to really. That’s the way twitter is moving with local trending topics (which suck for the most part) but if they had an implementation like this with the amount of traffic they have it would be awesome.
     
   • It’s easy to use to do the basics (that is, post something)
   
   

   Now, the BIG flaw, which they brought over from Wave by the way, is the horrible handling of following and followers. I understand they want to be helpful, but why on earth would they think that because I sent an e-mail to someone years ago, that person is a friend or that I would be interested in their “buzzes”. The very first time I clicked on the Buzz link I was already following 25 people!! and if I had decided from the start who I was going to follow, I would have picked at most 4 people out of those 25. Also, they should not allow people to follow me without asking for my permission, I can’t find a way to remove some of those followers from my list (while some users have a link and I can block them, some don’t and there doesn’t seem to be a way to get rid of them).

   One of the things that will surely be fixed (I hope!) in the future is the poor integration with other sites, they only have twitter and flickr at the moment and there are no options, you either add your link or delete it, and the twitter import is useless if you have your tweets protected (I’m sure they’re smart enough to figure out how to use OAuth).

   Overall, I believe it’s a MUCH better attempt than Wave was but for now I don’t think I’ll be using it . The poor support for linking my other accounts, the lack of intuitive privacy settings, and the awful handling of following/followers are enough to make me stay out, not to mention it does not work on Google Apps which is where I have my real e-mail address so monitoring Buzz will be as much of a pain as monitoring Wave since it’s a browser window I’ll need open just for that. I also think it will just fade over time and most people won’t use it in the long run, but of course I may be wrong.

   Good try google!

  © 2005-2009 Oscar Ferrer