Google Buzz

My first impression - I like the idea of adding connected sites : twitter, picasa, blogger, reader and all status messages. I am still searching for good social network desktop client which will connect to all my accounts : gmail, orkut, facebook, yahoo, linked-in, twitter but there is not such application existing yet. The once which was closer is Digsby, but digsby's UI is really clumsy to use.



Buzz is single window solution. You want to share picasa album or your recent tweet it works. Lets hope that it does not fail as Google Wave failed due to absence of freinds. I hope google this time sends invitations to clusters of users such that when I use buzz I will find at least some friends to share buzz. Buzz is suppose to compete with Facebook and Twitter, it surely has plus points against both

• it works right inside the most popular Google application - gmail
• no 140 character limit
• auto publish feature : when I tweet, same twit will be "buzzed" too

I hope Buzz comes with lot of "twitter" applications by default or provides options to add applications written with help of Buzz API like Gmail Labs application. One thing I would have liked to see is that Buzz should have implemented hashtags that are popular in twitter. Hashtags are like "user metadata" which helps to follow/search tweets that you are interested thus allowing to connect/discover like minded people.

On other side, I don't know what google is thinking of having two different products : Wave and Buzz. I think since Wave has failed Google was in serious need to restrict facebook's advance so google added social networking aspects to its most loyal user base - Gmail. I am not sure about Buzz success, its surely going to tank as like google's other recent products. Facebooks strong point is that all sharing links, photos, activities, thoughts is at the central of page but in gmail is just another view so am not sure it should be part of gmail. Gmail view is OK but there should be separate page also where I can just spend time on Buzz. Hope google adds new features slowly.

Beware of Google!!

Just now i was chatting with my college friend in Marathi - one of many languages spoken in India. I had missed some of last sentences so so opened it again from "Chats" section in Gmail. Google shows clips and sponesred adds above the main area where mail is displayed. I was amazed to see Adds of site targeted to marathi speking community, to be specific : Matrimony site. How does google know that i am chatting in Marathi and Engilsh mixed and Matrimony site add is relevant to the item to be displaced. Hats of to google!

But at the same time i feel you should be careful about GMail and Google in specific. They are building database of people : your social network, your browsing habits and many other things. Now it has come-up with browser - Chrome. Minimalist one, but behind it Google can store lot of personal information on its servers. Google's mantra is "Don't Be Evil". But after certain limit its really intrusive. Google basically uses all this information for advertising thats there bread-n-butter. But who knows what will they sell to the advertisers. So Beware of Google!

Here is post on HackerNews Network that talks about Dependence on Google
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350968