A ‘Buzz’ Kill For Google?
There’s not much of a buzz for Buzz, Google’s latest foray into social networking. Some technology experts are calling it “social networking for the anti-social”, others are calling it a “social networking aggregator” that does little more than funnel information from similar sites through it, and yet others say that it’s not quite different enough from its competitors Twitter and Facebook to be all that ground-breaking.
At first glance Buzz looks like a straightforward blend of the two sites. Users add friends, create profiles, and post status updates, to name just a few of the similar features. No doubt Google picked up a few things from Twitter, which they failed to buy last year, and are using them to their advantage.
Buzz is built into Gmail, so users do not need to pick and choose a separate list of “friends” to invite, as with most of the other sites. This easily-accessed information is proving to be both a blessing and a curse for Google, who has been heavily criticized for Buzz’s privacy options. To their credit, Google is working on installing more secure privacy features that allow users to opt-out more than in the earlier version, but the negative press has already turned off many users.
