The Bad Buzz About ‘Buzz’

With the release of Google’s newest social interaction tool, the internet giant hoped to compete with such applications as Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately for Google, its new ‘Buzz’ might be a short lived exploration if the reaction from the public continues to be as negative as it has from the start.

The basis for the backlash has been the fact that when it was first released the Google Buzz used your email contacts in order to gauge who you should be ‘following’. For some this was not a problem, as only friends and family are located in their address book. However for others this seemed a broad based invasion of the user’s privacy.

Because they are one step behind the other Social Networking Giants Google has attempted to take big steps in a small amount of time by allowing Google users to automatically link to people they already know and email, however most users feel as though they should have been asked whether or not they wanted to follow people, or whether they wanted to have certain people follow them. A simple function that would allow you to select who can follow you, and who can be followed would seem to an addition Google should look into adding in short order.