Google Buzz: The Next Generation of Social Media?
Google has developed yet another free service called “Google Buzz”. Google Buzz is another social networking service that combines some of the features of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Flickr, Picasa.
Google Buzz is easy to access as it is automatically built into your Gmail account. There is nothing you need to set up and you are automatically following the people that you frequently email and chat with. It offers a well designed full screen photo viewing and the ability for location posting from cellular devices. Buzz also pulls links, videos, status updates and other shared features directly into the Gmail interface. You can easily follow or choose not to follow people as well as see who is following you. You also have the ability to mark each individual post as either private or public, allowing users to keep personal information hidden.
Video on Google Buzz
Some Google users are quite upset by the latest Buzz craze and have even gone to lengths to write about how certain aspects of Google Buzz breaching their privacy. According to PC Magazine Google has made tweaks to Buzz to address security concerns. You can read the Blog post Google made about this here. Initially there were privacy issues with Google Buzz, which have since been addressed.
A lot of the concern was that people were worried that their contacts and some other information was being made public without their consent. I know personally I checked my Google Buzz today and had 10 people following me and I had absolutely no clue who they were. I realized that my information was listed as available through public search which I quickly changed.
I can appreciate and use social media to keep in touch with clients and friends. Its also a great way to find lost friends and has brought me back in touch with some lost friends that I never thought I’d be able to find again. With that said, I use it for what its good for and then go about my day. I have never gotten sucked into the huge social media craze and am proud to say that I am not an addict who spends several hours a day planting crops in Farmville.
As we all have seen Google loves to get their hands into everything. Whether its browsers, voice mail, online photos, documents, and now it seems that Google wants to get their piece of the social media pie. While Google Buzz looks promising, it seems to have a way to go before it will meet up to the big dogs such as Facebook and Twitter.
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Filed Under: Social Media
