Now what?

The Buzz Feels Good, But Funny

I was lucky to get to try out Google Buzz pretty soon after launch and after using it a bunch there are a lot of things to be excited about, some to be patient with, and others to be hopeful for. Overall, I’m bullish on Buzz because without a doubt it’s going to enable more people to share more things more often.

I’m excited about:

• For the first time, there isn’t a huge gap between my real life contacts and my social media contacts…who knows how sharing will change with the new audience.
• Buzz’s integration with Gmail. Buzz’s biggest achievement was eliminating the #1 hurdle to getting people to try out new web apps. Rather than having to get someone through a sign-up funnel, they’re only 1 click between a person’s inbox and Buzz-ing.

I’ll try to be patient with:

• Non-Google products making it into the flow. I understand the one-way sharing of tweets from Google’s perspective, but not a user’s perspective.
• Showing “just the right stuff”. After adding a few high profile people into my followers list, Buzz hasn’t shown as much intelligence as I would have liked for filtering content. Anytime someone comments on something from Kevin Rose, it’s buzzed right back to the top of my inbox.
• There’s a big duplication issue for anything from Twitter or Friendfeed getting shared multiple times or having the text appear twice within a message.

I’m hopeful for:

• A much better Google Profiles experience. When someone I don’t know comments on one of my buzzed items (or when I comment on someone’s item who doesn’t know me) its Google’s responsibility to make that introduction seamless. Make it easy for me to understand why this person might have left a comment, how I might know them, or why I want to get to know them. Right now Google Profiles seems like an afterthought, even though it could become core to a positive experience on Buzz.

Having been an early adopter to Buzz Beta (ie: Friendfeed) I think Google’s biggest challenge will be how they decide to resurface buzz worthy content. Will people be encouraged to act fast and light (leaving brief comments that don’t amount to much more than a ‘thumbs up’) or will there be more incentive for thoughtful and meaningful interactions? (and is that a problem that Google can even determine algorithmically?)

You can follow me on Buzz here.