Update: Google has announced that they are discontinuing Buzz. I have since then turned of Google Buzz.
Original article:
Google just released a new service, called Buzz. I tried it out, and at first glance, it appears that it is simply Google’s version of Twitter. Kind of made me want to avoid it since I was joining yet another social networking site. But I looked into it further. Here are some thing that I do like about it:
Like Twitter, it is very easy to use. Simply post an update, there it is.
Location based Google Buzz is integrated into my Android 1.6 phone, on the new Google Maps 4.0 available in the apps market for free. Android 2.0 phones are further integrated through a web page.
It is integrated into your already existing Gmail account page instead of being a stand-alone web site.
It integrates into other services, for example all my twitter updates appear in Buzz, and all my updates here at http://david.heineke.name also appear on Buzz. Same thing with pics added to Picasa and Flickr, videos added to youtube, and a few others for now.
It uses your Gmail address book to check to see which other users with Google accounts you want to see updates from.
There is concerns I have with privacy. For example, I may sometimes want to turn off the posting of the location when I post from my phone. Also, I may want to only make my post visible to my friends, not public. I think there is a way to do that, but I’ll bet a lot of people don’t realize what they are doing and say things they didn’t want to make public.
Anyway, I’ll try it out for a while. I will probably try to avoid location marking while at my own home.
David Heineke
