Google has rolled out BUZZ, their new social connection feature. It drafts onto Gmail, which I’ve been using to my content for a couple of years now. When Buzz rolled out I was asked nicely if I’d like to try it out – which was curious to me, because I’d clicked on my Gmail link in my browser. I was expecting my standard Gmail Inbox, not an offer. Going against my better judgment I thought “why not see if this new thing will be fun and make my life better?” I clicked OK.
By doing so, a new tab in the Gmail account list opened up beneath my Inbox called (appropriately) “Buzz”. Now I have yet another way to share with my friends my thoughts, links, aspirations, whether they want to read them or not. As comments came back, I noticed that my Inbox is now being flooded with responses to my various, non-sequitor test posts. Up until now, I had pretty good control over what came into this secret Inbox – and now it’s been contaminated. Before you hammer on me for not seeking out preferences or other settings to restore control to my Gmail Inbox, remember I accepted the offer to try this out. I’m sure that with a minimal amount of tweaking, it will begin to work the way I’d like it.
But the question that bothers me now is “do I really need another way to do this?”. Basically it amounts to a play against Twitter, which already serves as good of a role as needed in realm of sharing arguably pointless information. In the last years Twitter has even shown that it can be somewhat useful, and has a wide enough API to be easily integrated in multiple platforms. Does Google really need to BUZZ? I’m not convinced that this a good move. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong in the coming months or years, but I don’t know of many people who’ve jumped on the WAVE bandwagon.
This smacks of Microsoft’s failed attempt to get into the blog world with Spaces, and Facebook’s current User Experience disaster (created when they tried to angle their News feed to be more like Twitter). I understand that there’s a business need to compete with people in your space, but merely copying what they do is short-sighted. Be unique!




