Seems to be quite a bit of buzz going on about Google Buzz these days.
By and large, Social Networks are fine. When it comes to Social Networking, we are free to come and go as we please .. or at least, we “used to” be able to do that .. Enter The Buzz.
IMO, putting the Buzz into the Gmail is most likely one of the bigger boneheaded things Google has done lately. There is a time and a place for everything, and this line of thought even applies to Social Networking.
I look at my friends on Social Networking sites, not in an email client.
Back in the day, when I set up my Gmail, I configured it to the IMAP, and looked it over in Outlook. No need to be looking at what everyone else is doing — I’m looking at my email. Yes, there is even a time and a place for email.
Due to the fact that Google has been so wrapped up in their keylogging and tracking lately, I’ve decided that my Gmail account won’t be sending out anymore emails.
“Sure,” you might say, “But isn’t the Buzz turned off?”
With Google there just isn’t any way of ever knowing that — I mean, look at how the Google Toolbar continued to track it’s users even in spite of the fact that it was supposedly turned off — not going to take the chance I’m afraid. And thank God for the Domain email server, because it stands to get fairly busy, fairly shortly.
Have I ever tried Buzz? .. Short answer .. No.
Some ideas are just so idiotic that it’s not even worth the time to check them out. Social Networking through your email client is a very poor idea possibly born out of the frustration on Google’s behalf that Twitter and Facebook might just be beating the pants off of them with regard to viewership.
One day Google is going to sit down and figure out that one of the main reasons why people surf the internet is because they like to go places, see unique things, and visit “other venues” — it can’t be the Google venue every single time. AOL tried that model and look what happened to it.
Buzz will go the way of Orkut and Froogle I’m afraid, and that will be the end of it.
In the mean time — hand me the bug spray — will ya?
Update on the Google Buzz scene:
The danger in creating an instant social network around email contacts, as Google Buzz does with Gmail, is that the boundaries between what is private and what is public are not always clear. @TechCrunch
