Yes, I admit it, I kept refreshing my Google Mail page throughout most of yesterday, and the day before that, in expectation of seeing Google's new Buzz social updating service. I had even taken the extraordinary measure of cleaning out my inbox, so that this newcomer could nest amid pristine surroundings (honestly, Ikram, it's all just ones and zeros — Ed).
When Buzz finally did show up, I took a quick look and buzzed these rousing opening words:
Hey, they've slapped FriendFeed onto my Gmail page and called it Buzz
I didn't mean that to sound dismissive. In fact, I rely on FriendFeed to aggregate my lifestream, but ever since FriendFeed's future was cast into doubt following acquisition by Facebook, I have been looking around for a capable substitute. Is Buzz it? Not yet, I'm afraid, because it can only pull updates from a couple of non-Google sources, whereas my FriendFeed is hooked up to about a dozen. However, I'm sure Google are going to improve on this quickly. Then we'll see.
Yet, last week when rumours started to surface that Google would be unveiling something like this, I commented with some bitterness:
On the possibility that Google will (re-)enter the microblogging space, this time on a scale rivalling Facebook & Twitter. Come on, when did Google last release a web service with mass appeal? Too many great ideas have been either killed off (Lively), abandoned (Jaiku, how ironic) or left in a half baked state (Wave and to an extent even Reader).
Somehow, in the days since, my expectations became raised. I think it is mostly down to hearing that Buzz is designed around open data standards. ActivityStreams, WebFinger, stuff like that.
Today I did have a few more occasions to dip into my Buzz stream. Mostly I read annoyed & bewildered reactions by people objecting to the firehose of updates (by default Buzz recruits all your email contacts as followers!) cluttering up their email. Among other gripes. As for me, I can see it has possibilities. I buzzed:
How might I use Buzz?
Discovering, reading, linking to, commenting on & sharing 'interesting stuff' is presently my predominant use-case for social media. I rely mainly on Google Reader for the discovery part.
Currently, Delicious takes care of the commenting & archiving parts of that workflow. I would consider switching to Buzz for this. Major drawback is that Buzz lacks a tagging facility for posts. I like tags. They help me search for archived links by subject. I suppose I /could/ type tags into each buzz, like those horrendous Twitter hashtags, and rely on Gmail search to retrieve tagged buzzes. But the interface for managing tags on Delicious is unmatched.
There's an idea. Someone should build a linkblogging app based on the Buzz API.
