Feb 26, 2010

I've seen Buzz from both sides now

I know these are another one of those cheesy slide-deck articles - but the HuffPo recently posted decks for The 9 Worst Features About Google Buzz and The Best Features About Google Buzz. I found the rankings, especially of the worst things, quite interesting. The number #1 worst thing wasn't privacy but "No Chronological Feeds". It seems that in its attempt to make aggregating and filtering social media content a personalized experience, Google's launch version of Buzz fell short. Buzz did well to integrate with web technologies and offer nice interfaces to pictures, entering endless status posts, or navigate content. However, Buzz failed to make it a useful for individual preferences like privacy, collapsing comments, or creating lists. There are some contradictions (or seemingly) between the best and worst - such as Finding People to Follow ends up on both lists. The devil is in the details and as with all social tools the number of people participating. I suspect finding people will get easier if more people use Buzz.

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