Google Buzz

Good idea but wrong network approach

Recently, Google launched a new product called Google Buzz. The idea is to aggregate messages from other networks and then gather it all and share with your friends at Google Buzz. It really is a good idea, except for one point: Google decided to automatically add your recently e-mailed Gmail contacts as friends and automatically aggregate the content you share on other Google products without asking your permission. And that caused a lot of criticism all over the Internet


By GABRIELA ZAGO (gabriela.zago@wavemagazine.net)
from Porto Alegre, BRAZIL


Google Buzz was launched on February 9th, 2010. From that day on, a label called "Buzz" appeared right below the Inbox on all Gmail accounts. And while many people simply ignored it, others went straight to learn how to use the tool. And many got frustrated when they learned that even though they didn't do anything, a lot of people was already receiving a copy of things they shared with other contacts on the Internet.

Although it may look similar to Google Wave in some aspects, Google Buzz was developed by the Jaiku team. Google bought Jaiku, a microblogging tool, on October 9, 2007. Much of what we can see on Google Buzz was there already on Jaiku, like being able to comment after each update, or the ability to pull content from a RSS feed.

One person, many networks

One basic mistake made by Google Buzz was importing contacts from one network and automatically make them receive updates from other networks. Worse: the list of contacts was public by default, which meant that a doctor could have all their patients listed as connections on their profile, for example.

It could be argued that in the moment you publicize any information on the web, it becomes public. But it's not exactly like that. Researchers on social networks sites have demonstrated that you will have different behaviors in different websites - and this behavior will depend, among other factors, on the people that will potentially read your messages on that place. Or, in other words: you share different information with different contacts in different contexts. Your followers on Twitter are not exactly the same people you add as contacts on Flickr. Your Gmail contacts are not the same people you would share a piece of news on Google Reader. And the mess that Google Buzz did was aggregating all your messages from Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader, Picasa, and other sources, and sharing them with your Gmail contacts, turning it all in one single big network.

Later, those problems were (partially) solved, since new users had to approve their contact suggestions and decide whether to publicize or not their contact list.

Another problem raised regarding aggregation tools is that all messages from a single user are duplicated into different networks. If someone happens to be their friend on more than one network, they will receive that update twice, which can be very annoying. Users can turn on or off the sharing of contents from other websites. But there isn't, so far, an option to share only parts of the content from a website (for example, it would be interesting to import to Google Buzz only items you shared and liked on Google Reader, and not one or another type isolated).

Turning e-mail more social

Despite its wrong approach regarding contacts, Google Buzz is actually a promising tool. It aggregates, but it also allows direct posting. The comment feature makes conversations flow naturally. There's no strong character limitation - you can write more than 140 characters. And, better: it's all there on your Gmail account, a place you go all the time to check your e-mails, so why not use it also to know what your contacts are doing online, and eventually chatting with them? Why not having a social tool right inside your e-mail?

Other features include mobile support, integration with Inbox, the ability to send replies to the user e-mail and the possibility of sending updates to a group of friends and not to everyone (public/private posts). Comments are updated in real time, just like in Google Wave.

For TechCrunch, Google appears to have solved their "social problem" with Buzz. They had other social network tools, like Orkut, Jaiku and OpenSocial, but very few people used them compared to other social network tools (Orkut, for instance, is only popular in Brazil and India). Buzz is the first tool with the potential to spread worldwide, since it was launched already with a massive social base (all Gmail users!).



(Published: 10.03.2010.)