Tech & Biz

What is Google Buzz? A Quick Overview of How to Use it

by Amy Judd | February 10, 2010 at 04:23 pm

1586 views | 25 Recommendations | 3 comments

Google Buzz is Google's latest foray in to the world of social networking and while it works through your G-Mail account account, it is directly competitng with other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

What is Google Buzz?

In a nutshell, Google Buzz allows anyone with a G-Mail account to not only link up with other members in their network, but also post status updates, pictures and see immediately what is going on on other sites such as Twitter and Flickr. You can post in private or in public and Google will somehow rate your posts and give things that a good a 'good buzz' stamp of approval.

Google Buzz has features such as real-time updates with no refresh required, the ability to import stuff from sites like Picasa, Twitter, Flickr and Google Reader, and the ability to see only the good stuff and not bother with the rest of the crap.

It's this feature that distinguishes it from other social networking sites. While sites such as Twitter and Facebook just show you everything and you have to do your own weeding, Google Buzz will do it for you and will recommend posts from not only your friends but from everyone that it thinks you will appreciate.

How to use Google Buzz:

When you log in to your G-Mail and Buzz has been activiated on your account, you will see an information page with a 'Buzz' tab. You click that 'Buzz' tab for the first time and Google will prompt you to link to your followers, edit your profile and connect up your sites. You can get out of this at any time by pressing 'okay.'

It sets up a feed for you, based on your information, of other people Buzzing that you can see on a regular basis. The box called 'connected sites' is where you can decide what you atuomatically post to Buzz.

A user can automatically buzz photos uploaded to Picasa or Flickr, shared Google Reader items, Blogger posts, Youtube videos, Google chat status, and Tweets.

If you want to create a Buzz:

Simply click on the text box located at the top, and when that box shows up, you can type whatever you want in there; such as a status update or a link. The dropdown box here enables private posting if you want to do that.

In a box below, you can see a feed of all other things buzzing on Google Buzz; a new Buzz will flash in blue to alert you. You can also share each buzz if you wish.

Comments are a particularly useful feature of Buzz. They also update automatically, though users can "mute" updates on the post (and the post itself) with an option under the arrow at the upper right hand corner. Comments to a user's Buzz, as well as reply comments, appear in the Gmail Inbox with a "Buzz" icon next to them, and display in the e-mail just like Buzz. A user can also type @username, just like Twitter, to ensure that a comment goes to a third user's Inbox.

Not everyone is pleased with Google Buzz however.

Silicon Vally Insider says it lacks "any imagination or compelling reasons to use it." They also quite rightly pointed out the name is a Yahoo rip-off.

What do you think of Google Buzz?

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A. Tran

at 17:45 on February 10th, 2010

Google Buzz also has a privacy flaw, especially for journalists who wish to maintain a modicum of privacy with their contacts.

The problem is that -- by default -- the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile.

In other words, before you change any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see who are the people you email and chat with most.

Quaker120 (not verified)

at 18:51 on February 10th, 2010

For those who want to disable it, go into your Google profile, About Me and uncheck "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me"

ycc2106

at 01:30 on February 12th, 2010

Google Buzz? Pfffft - Tuesday, February 09, 2010 by Dave Winer.
I liked Google Buzz at first, for about 15 minutes.

But when I got to the API, I saw a big red X over its future.

They had to embrace the Twitter API to capitalize on the know-how in the developer community. Google is going it alone. Good luck with that. Maybe it will get uptake, but there's nothing here for me as a developer. I'm even more bored with Buzz after 15 minutes than I am with Twitter after three years.

This comment in yesterday's post sums it up: "Google is a big clunky Microsoft-like company with strategy taxes, and they don't trust the web or developers, or each other, and their internal politics drive most of the decisions they make. To compete with Twitter is an easy sell inside Google, but to actually have the will to be cut-throat about it, that's another thing. It'll probably have to pay homage to Google Wave (remember that?) and therefore will have some elements that are completely incomprehensible. Twitter likely won't get killed, because Google's product will likely fall far-short of what's needed to get us all to think they can be trusted."

gotta say this -- they aren't even as smart as Microsoft was in its heyday.

PS: I am a Gmail user but I don't want Buzz. How do I get it out of the user interface of Gmail?

PPS: There's a command to turn off Buzz at the bottom of the Gmail UI.