Tried out Google Buzz this morning and my first reaction is 'not impressed'.
1. 'Open' sharing? The most obvious reason is that Google Buzz is for those with gmails and google profiles. As Graham Jones points out on his blog this morning Microsoft live has double the number of visits as gmail has and yahoo has five times the traffic.
2. Innovate - don't imitate. The Buzz brings nothing new to the market. It's pretty much like friendfeed or any other sharing platform out there. It will probably be used by some number of people, but it's very unlikely to attract any crowd. Not even the name is new. Yahoo already has a Buzz.
3. Over promise - under deliver. Google manages to create an enormous hype and attention around a new product that brings nothing new. The next wave? The result is widespread disappointment.
4. Need to know or nice to know? Google automatically picks out people for you to follow based on the ones you communicate the most with via gmail and gchat. It's not a suggestion, they follow them for you. Well, maybe Id like to keep my buzz for my friends only, or collagues only. Or there are people I exchange mny emails with because I have to, not because I want to and would absolutely not want in my buzz stream. That should be my decision but not Google's. Suggesting the people is smart, adding them automatically is not.
5. Privacy violation! Google doesn't only automatically add connections to your profile, but makes them public to the world by default. Google being reckless with our privacy information is a serious matter, considering how much information Google has about most of it's users. You can read more about that on Lifehacker.
And finally, one reason to follow the Buzz - It's got an integrated search engine driven by Google :)
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