

Google Buzz? More Like Buzz Kill - razorburn
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/techtonicshifts/archive/2010/02/10/google-buzz-more-like-buzz-kill.aspx

======
benwr
I'm a little peeved by the author's parting shot: "a world where nerd
engineers get turned loose in a Montessori preschool, and they have no idea
about user interface design and, frankly, they don’t care. " Everything the
author does on the internet was created by these "nerd engineers," most with
no expertise in UI design.

Petty quibbles aside, though, the author has a point: Google's services
recently have appeared to lean toward the Google-serving with the side-effect
of helping Google's userbase at large. Of course, they are a for-profit
corporation and this is to be expected, but I think everyone was hoping that
"don't be evil" really meant "actively pursue the best interests of the
internet, even above profit."

On the other hand, I disagree that Buzz specifically is Google simply trying
to punch out other social networking sites. Currently there are three basic
types of personal communication online: IM, Email, and Facebook/Twitter. GMail
has already combined the first two, and I think it makes logical sense to add
the third. It's certainly useful, just maybe not useful and better.

~~~
adzuci
Good point on the evil, although I'd have to say I'm a little more than peeved
overall with the attacks, if anything the article put me more on Google's
side. Yes, Google absorbs startups and imitates any product, but it's
competitive edge is the crowd of engineers who say, "Hey, I could do that
better". All its expansions are evolutionary, and they take into consideration
all the criticism out there better than most others could.

Regardless, if you don't want to Buzz then opt-out, but the competition
between Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest will come down too which are
most convenient and affective, followers will take it from there. Right now
though, Buzz can easily replace Twitter for me, but theres a way to go before
Facebook starts trembling, and I don't think Orcut is joining the show any
time soon.

------
buster
First, while still having some little bugs, the gmail integration is done
really good. That's probably the best thing after looking at buzz for one day.

Second, is this Author pretending to be knowledgable of tech? This blog post
is one of the worst informed posts i've seen so far. On a technology he is
pretending to know about. I mean the part about Google Wave. He should know,
that Wave is not really intended for real use nowadays. There isn't even a
client protocol done by the developers! That should tell you about the early
state of wave. There also is no federation, i don't see other wave servers
connected to google wave popping up. Without a client protocol and several
running wave servers, Wave is just tech preview thing, not more.

Third, he probably has missed the new century. People can complain over social
networks, but he may have missed that social networks are overtaking mail and
IM in terms of communication channel at the young users, the internet
population of tomorrow. In that way, integrating buzz with gmail is a
_perfect_ fit! That some old guy is complaining will be something we laugh at
in a few years.

Anyway, not one point of constructive/objective critisism in this blog post,
just "ohhh, i'm scared, i don't want that new stuff, i want my old mail
back!!". Why doesn't he unfollow his pre setup followers and be done with it?
It's not like Google forces him to read status updates of his friends. All in
all, the post is a shame for a blog post that is supposed to be about new
technology.

Also, it is worth mentioning, that buzz is probably the most developer
friendly and open social network out there <http://code.google.com/intl/de-
DE/apis/buzz/> .

~~~
alexro
I think he's complaining from the ordinary consumer (non-geek) point of view.
And if such he is perfectly right.

------
nlanier
Perhaps I am in the large minority but so far I have found Buzz to be engaging
and quite useful. I wanted to try out a local restaurant and put the question
to Buzz and received eight insightful responses in less than an hour. I enjoy
it and I think it has plenty of "stickiness" as a lot of my non-technophobe
friends are already using it quite heavily.

~~~
bradtgmurray
You could do this same thing on Twitter. Is the already large install base the
only thing Google Buzz has going for it?

~~~
natrius
The first time I opened Buzz, I saw random thoughts from people _in my
neighborhood_. If you're asking for restaurant suggestions, that's going to be
far more helpful than Twitter, where you need to have people following you or
searching for something in your tweet for people to ever see it.

------
apike
The oddest thing about Buzz was that it's automatically following everybody
I've ever conversed with using GMail, whether or not I know them. They
successfully avoided the "nobody's here" problem that Wave had, but by opting
in everybody who uses GMail, it created the opposite problem.

~~~
jedc
Really? I was only automatically following my real friends.

I keep my full address book in Google Contacts (1000+ ppl, including long-gone
friends/workmates/classmates). Perhaps because I use Gmail as my main personal
account it was able to figure out who was who.

~~~
btipling
I used gmail for maybe a year many years ago, Google Buzz ended up following
people I've never talked to, including someone who spammed me once.

~~~
adzuci
Heh, interesting, I'd say it definitely was made to jump start off of Gmail
users, works well for everyone I know, but looks like there are exceptions.

------
akkartik
_"Then came Twitter, which is mostly pointless, since I really don’t care what
anyone else is doing at any particular moment and have no desire to tell
others what I’m doing either, but again I joined, mostly because if I didn’t
get on Twitter I’d look like someone who doesn’t “get it,” as they say in the
Valley, and in my line of work that’s a bad reputation to have."_

If that's indeed how people are judging him, this article is not going to help
his 'reputation'.

I absolutely understand somebody not using a service (I don't use facebook).
But that whole paragraph gives me very little confidence that this is an
opinion I should listen to. It could be written by my 50-year-old uncle who's
"in IT".

~~~
sterling
"It could be written by my 50-year-old uncle who's "in IT"."

What does that mean? Does your 50-year-old uncle exist? I am 48 and I am "in
IT" and I work mostly with men between the ages of 21 and 27. Despite their
youth, their very long/very short hair, and their t-shirts, some of them are
genuine fuddy-duddies (old-fashioned, conservative, set in their thinking,
however you want to call it). The chief focus of their conservatism is an
almost religious adherence to doctrine, to how things have been so far in
their very short lifetimes.

Here's what someone my age thinks: Google has introduced a "service" that
politely adds to the annoyance of our lives. If google cared about what users
wanted, they would be improving their core business, search, which is becoming
increasingly polluted by spam.

~~~
Groxx
(Empirically) statistically, though, the 50+ age group is _significantly_ less
up-to-date with internet fads than the below-50 group. Yes, there are
exceptions, but a quick glance will inform anyone of the same comparison.

That said, early-20s here, and I'm turning off Buzz. I'm also out of FB. Which
makes _me_ one of the oddballs for my age group.

~~~
rdouble
_(Empirically) statistically, though, the 50+ age group is significantly less
up-to-date with internet fads_

Do you actually have those statistics? I thought the actual statistics were
trending the opposite direction:

[http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/02/fastest-growing-
dem...](http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/02/fastest-growing-demographic-
on-facebook-women-over-55/)

~~~
Groxx
First, I do not have the statistics, though now I have supporting statistics.
Such a claim cannot be accurately quantified, so not only can I not _ever_
have such statistics, I only claimed that it could be discovered empirically -
essentially, by looking at what is, instead of requiring hard fact.

Fastest _growth_ implies nothing without a scale to start with. If there's one
100+ year old on Facebook, and in a single day two more get added, they've got
a projected growth rate of over 70,000% per year. Skewed and unmaintainable
statistics are effectively worthless.

Look further down the page, especially at the pie chart showing FB use by age
group. 45+ amounts to 8% of users (55+ only 3%). The 18-25 group, which I'm
in, amounts to 43% single-handedly.

The 45+ group is growing faster than others because they're years behind
everyone else, and typically fewer join at all than the earlier adopters. QED.

------
chaosmachine
Indeed, after taking a quick look at Buzz, I scrolled down to the bottom of
gmail and clicked "turn off buzz". Who needs more of this stuff in their life?

~~~
gcampbell
I'm pretty annoyed that my kids' email accounts suddenly turned into a social
networking site - there's a reason I don't let them have Facebook accounts.

~~~
derefr
I understand the complaint, but in this day and age, that's like being annoyed
that your microwave and VCR have clocks. Everything is a social networking
site now. I had to think for a minute in order to _not_ include some form of
profiles and user-to-user messaging in the last app I wrote.

I think it's just a generation gap, though—being younger, I grew up without
any expectation of privacy from strangers, and I don't see anything wrong with
that, really. I know that everyone else has just as many trite details
floating around about them as I do, so there's no reason to single me out.
It's like the sociological warfare of cars getting a steering-wheel-locking
device/alarm/what have you, but in reverse: every person that _removes_ their
car's security is one more person reducing the probability that my car will be
the one to get stolen.

~~~
lutorm
That's fine until ten years from now someone _really_ wants to make an ass out
of _you_ \-- not your friends, not random people, but _you_ \-- and go on a
digging spree.

That sort of security by obscurity only works until someone starts looking
with a specific thing in mind.

~~~
derefr
It's not security by obscurity, it's security by honesty. You can't blackmail
someone with something everyone already knows about them.

------
antimora
"That is the biggest problem with Buzz—it was invented not for us but for
Google. " is right on the spot

~~~
yellowbkpk
I get the feeling that all of Google's products were invented for Google to
help streamline the way it does things. Gmail, Wave, GChat, Reader ... all of
these things have the feel of "we didn't like what was existing in the
ecosystem, so we made our own the way we like it."

... and that's a good thing.

~~~
gaius
I doubt that Google ever had the problem "how do we best show ads to internal
email users". GMail was marketware from the start. That's neither good nor bad
in and of itself, but let's be honest about why Google does anything.

~~~
stevejohnson
Gmail was _not_ marketware from the start. It was an internal tool to which
ads were added later.

~~~
gaius
So the legend says.

------
alexro
"Why does Buzz even exist? Is it because Google wants to make my life better
in some way? No. Buzz exists because Google feels threatened by Twitter and
Facebook and wants to kill them. Google has become what Microsoft used to
be—the Borg, the company that gobbles up ideas from smaller rivals and cranks
out lame imitations in an attempt to put the little guys out of business." -
he nailed it

~~~
MikeCapone
If the imitation is lame, then that's too bad. But if it becomes better over
time _and_ is more open, then that'll be a good thing.

It's always surprising how people can on one hand deplore how closed Facebook
is, and how it doesn't have competition and is just becoming a big
monopolistic walled-garden, and then when more open competition arrives, they
whine that there are too many social networks and that someone else than
Google should've done it (oh yeah, who else has the installed user base to
compete with Facebook and Twitter?).

~~~
alexro
That definitely is a difficult position for Google to be in, hence they need
not to rush with such important decisions as privacy inside the email
application.

------
maurycy
Good point. I start to move my e-mail out of Gmail. Their approach to privacy
freaks me out.

------
Aegean
good technology but the first thing I looked for was how to make people
unfollow me. It's simply stupid how they forget privacy and only look at the
_buzz_ it brings. I will turn it off for now.

~~~
sp332
Go to your contacts and make a new group. Add the people you want to let
follow you. Change your privacy settings so that only people in that group can
see your "buzz."

Not really intuitive, but I think that's the "official" way to do it.

------
caryme
I saw a pretty telling comment on a friend's buzz imported from twitter:

"I'm glad that I can get a glimpse of the twitter life, and not actually have
to figure out another social networking thing. Yay!"

This was striking to me. It seems like this Twitter outsider does not view
Buzz - something in her gmail - as "another social networking thing." Maybe
this looks different to those of us on the outside.

------
polynomial
I completely disagree. Sure it's easy to take pot shots at companies like
Google as soon as they get a little too big/powerful for their _britches_
however to really understand Google's importance, at least one crucial aspect,
look at what's going on in China, and now Iran, and somewhat unbelievably now
Australia (who apparently are trying to emulate China.)

Systems of real-time communication are critical infrastructure and the ongoing
debate over freedom and privacy serves the lesson that there are no easy
answers. We do know however that there is an especially interesting, if
complex, relationship between technological systems and political freedom and
that this is an issue of growing importance.

In short, while Buzz may compete with Twitter (or Facebook) and while a
certain number will still use it to tell you what they had for lunch or
forward the 2010 equivalent of an email chain letter meme, the reality is that
it is just another piece of the puzzle in the emerging web of global
communications infrastructure, and has much more far-reaching implications.

------
adrianwaj
Product Manager Todd Jackson who presented Buzz seemed really smart and
enthusiastic, and that's a really good start for Buzz. There is a need for
this type of stream-based social networking.

I think the biggest factors in Buzz's success will be:

\- can Google monetize it: they should do the things that Twitter won't in
this respect.

\- will the API be easy enough and presented simply enough for novices to use
(eg like Twitter) - but also be complex enough for advanced usage: eg, easy
location based stuff

\- can they fully break it out of the Gmail Silo and make it a standalone
service. Why not create a new product with independent name, Microsoft Live
became Bing. Google Buzz becomes _____

\- can they integrate it with Google Apps email interfaces rather than just
GMail

most importantly

\- will they keep engineers and many resources on it, taking in feedback and
iterating

~~~
oscardelben
> \- can Google monetize it: they should do the things that Twitter won't in
> this respect.

What they really want is data, so they are already monetizing it

------
pilif
here in Zürich, Switzerland, the map is exploding with buzzes of various
people all over the place. Sometimes there's even conversation happening
between complete strangers, which, trust me on that, is totally uncommon here
in Switzerland :-)

In so far, buzz seems to have had a huge impact in the society I live in, so
I'm happy.

The very aggressive binding to the location IMHO really emphasizes location
dependent communication over general communication - something I have used
Twitter for so far and probably will still be using in the future.

But for little, location dependent things like "don't visit restaurant x right
now - it's full" or "it looks like the tram is late", buzz is incredibly
useful and being heavily used for around here.

That it also spawns conversation between strangers is a nice additional
benefit.

------
perlpimp
It is easier to apologize then to get permission first, or so many thought
leaders say. So I commend google on making a bold move like that.

They can fix it up later on with some more privacy controls, updates to
interface. Facebook is doing it twice a year to their their core product.

------
kerringtonx
Buzz should be Google's own starting point for leading into Wave. I think they
should turn Wave into the all encompassing aggregator of everything. Then,
throw that whole package into Chrome, as opposed to Wave standalone, make it
clean/fast, and it would be pretty fun to use. I'd be in Chrome all day
without having to load any other social site

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motters
"Google has copied stuff that people do on Facebook and Twitter and added them
to Gmail"

That's a pretty concise summary.

------
jasonkester
Can somebody explain what Buzz actually does?

As far as I can tell, it is filling a tab on my inbox with random messages
from people I've never heard of (though presumably are in my email address
book or something), saying things like "I am testing Buzz."

How is this supposed to improve my life?

~~~
EricBurnett
Presumably you accepted the default suggested people to follow. Go to the buzz
tab, unfollow anyone you don't immediately recognize, and it becomes like
facebook except integrated into gmail and only for people you actually
communicate with.

Improve your life? I don't think anyone can answer that yet - it depends how
people end up using it. And if you decide you don't like it, opt out.

~~~
calcnerd256
Opting out is at the bottom of the page, by the way. It's right next to opting
out of chat.

~~~
colonelxc
It does not opt you out, it only hides buzz from your gmail

Disabling Buzz: <http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10451703-2.html>

------
richardw
I think the author should stop signing up for new web services. This is the
path to happiness, for him.

------
philk
As with most of these things I think it's pretty hard to say whether it's
worthwhile until it's been out in the wild for a while. Many people looked at
Twitter and thought it was useless initially ("140 characters? Ha!") and that
wasn't an accurate prediction.

~~~
jff
It wasn't? (2 minutes ago from web)

------
pkulak
I'm just sad that they don't have it for apps yet. I'd like to start using it,
but then if it does become available for the email address that I actually use
(and that people know about) I don't want to have to start all over.

------
dbz
I understand you do not wish to use social networking sites. We all get that
from the article.

Instead of turning off _buzz_ you complain about how complicated it is. Who
wants to bet me money he didn't spend ten minutes on _buzz_ before deciding it
was crap?

Why? Why? Why? Why? ... Why would Google be trying to make you feel guilty?
That is so ridiculous- I'm not going to comment any further.

Jesus. Stop complaining. Buzz was invented for me. Maybe for Google too. Not
aimed for people, however, like you Mr. Tech writer/author.

I want to rant so much and use ad hominem to its full potential but I won't. I
have a feeling I've spent more time writing this post than you did looking at
Buzz.

~~~
dbz
If people are going to downvote me, I would appreciate knowing why -other than
the fact that I believe the author ignorantly wrote and article, and people
don't like to hear what I have to say (sometimes).

~~~
philk
Not having actually downvoted you I'd say it's because the tone of your
comment comes across as rather angry and personal.

Picking apart arguments based on their content seems to get a better reception
than attacking their author.

~~~
dbz
Well, I do dislike first impressions because of how judgmental people can be.
I would love to take apart the facts of his arguments, but he is just writing
opinions and stating features. I'd be wrong to disagree with features, and I
dislike his opinions. I believe they are not based off of experience with
_Buzz_ but based off of previously held ideals about social networking sites
the author has claimed he dislikes. He is applying his view on one thing
automatically to another without giving it a shot. He hasn't even given it a
couple of days.

------
floodfx
classic dissenter view of a new product (or products in this case). newsweek
writer pissing on facebook, twitter and buzz in one article.

i guess this is indicative of why i haven't read a newsweek article since
never and probably won't unless i am baited into it again.

------
aswanson
So I just checked into buzz and found a work email buzz from someone who's
posted nothing and another person who I have no reason to follow or even care
about. So until they get like, I dunno, more than 150 passionate users can we
let this Orkut 2.0 clone rest easy?

------
RyanMcGreal
>Then came Twitter, which is mostly pointless, since I really don’t care what
anyone else is doing at any particular moment and have no desire to tell
others what I’m doing either

Does anyone still use Twitter that way?

~~~
btipling
I use Twitter to read news, updates from organizations and look at space
pictures from astronauts. I kind of have replaced Google Reader with Twitter.

~~~
levesque
That's interesting. I do use google reader but not twitter.

What does Twitter bring you that google reader cannot?

------
GrandMasterBirt
I think the idea is to integrate buzz, facebook, twitter all into one inbox in
your gmail account so you can respond in the same format you got the message
in. So it don't matter if your friend is on fb or twitter or whatever you just
go to 1 inbox.

