Alright, so this spring I was mostly offline for a few months whilst I wrote my senior thesis and worked through some things. This sabbatical started the day after Google Buzz launched. I was a bit disappointed that I wouldn’t be using Buzz for awhile as I had been very excited to get see how well it worked. When I got back, I fell in love with Buzz! The ability to have conversation threads with my friends about many topics, without the need to all be on a forum, or FB was awesome! All we need is a Gmail account, which I still hold to be the best email account in existence. Awesome, right? Apparently, not so much.

You see, much of my social circle immediately started using Buzz. A lot. I have actually grown to know several more people through use of this service, and I’m glad for it! However, many more people simply hate it. I won’t link any stories, as the ones I found this morning were dripping with crudity and cursing, however, a quick google search will confirm what I say: the world at large seems to hate Buzz. I’ll qualify this: most of those hate articles were written in February. Still, at least in the tech world, Buzz is regarded as a huge failure.

Why? It seems a no brainer: you have a Gmail account. Most of your friends also use Gmail. Sadly, when you wanted to have social conversations (generally with more than one person), you had to join a forum, or FB, or some such service. Enter Buzz: You and your friends enable Buzz. Instantly, you have the ability to share links, pictures, anything you want! And the kicker: you get to have conversations as long as you want on the shared items. Pretty awesome right? That’s not even the best part! Instead of having to go check for updates on the conversation, or constantly refresh a message board… Each updates is actually emailed to your inbox! If you tire of a thread, simply click that nice friendly button that says to mute it from your inbox. Sweet eh? Oh yes, and if someone else comments on the post while you’re viewing it, you see that comment magically show up instantly.  

A few extra features I’d like to mention: You can import posts from various Google services, as well as Twitter. Here’s a screenie of the ones I use. I make use of the twitter one quite frequently, as any of my followers can tell you. I leave most of my posts public be default, as I’m in the business of trying to get people to see what I post and share, instead of hiding it. However, you can set your posts to be private, just you and your contacts. If you don’t want some of your contacts seeing what you post… I suppose either delete the contacts or block them from Buzz. But I like my friends.

Edit: I’d like to add the words of an “anonymous person off the street”(as he put it). I met him through Buzz.

… [with] Facebook, if you post too many statuses, people get annoyed. You can have better conversations on Buzz, because it crosses the line between IM and email. You don’t have to interrupt someone with an IM, but don’t have to make it as official as an email…

So why is Buzz regarded as a failure? I love it and use it daily! I’m interested in your thoughts. Please let me know!

Izzy