My buzz is huge! Google Buzz hurts like a hangover

by Michael Mayes on February 10th, 2010

Checking my email a week ago I was invited to start using Google Buzz – since then there has been a lot of chatter about Buzz so I'll just wrap up my thoughts here.

: Image via CrunchBase

What I like so far:

The UI is nicely integrated with gmail as are most google products – they keep I clean and simple (with a place for text ads)
Auto following friends – this made sense at first until I heard about the privacy concerns
Auto suggesting others to follow – Suggested contacts helped get the site going (although there were inherent privacy issues)
Asking me about showing my profile – this was a key feature for me as I wasn't sure if I wanted to include this yet in my google profile or on other related web results

What Im not sure about

Why it's with my email – as a core daily task, I don't like messing wih my email. I don't use chat or any addons or mix email apps. It's a business task and it's about GTD so I like to focus
Connecting other streams – I already have services linked with Twitter facebok tumbl friendfeed feedburnr and tweetstream. I am about at my limit for channeling my social graph to new places. And why do I need to send it thru buzz when the same people are seeing it elsewhere?
Giving google more data – I didn't used to care about this. But now that google is the new Microsoft I am getting concerned about how much I willingly give them in terms of my user data. They already have me for email search docs maps reader and more. Just like an investing strategy you don't want all the eggs in the same basket.
Is there a community – I need to wait on this one. I am noticing some buzz from a few new and intresting people that I see thru some of my more savvy friends. I like that. But I can easil get to some great content via Tumblr or the blogs I follow or best so far via Twitter and allthe freqt things that people are linking. I only need so much of this and Buzz isn't doing anything else for me

For now I am peeking at buzz once or twice a day to see what's happening but I expect it to drop off soon. Interested but not adopted.