Google Buzz, so far so meh
Allow me to add my voice to the masses of Gmail users underwhelmed by Google Buzz. I just don’t see how it’s that much different from all the other social networks out there. Andrew Leonard, over at Salon.com, points out that “Adding functionality to a core platform in your life is much more attractive than setting up yet another entirely new service.” But there’s the thing… Gmail is not a core platform in my life. In fact, email in general is becoming less and less important to me. I communicate with my friends through Facebook and SMS, with my colleagues through Twitter and I get work done through corporate email. My Gmail account is dominated by spam and e-newsletters with the occasional forwarded joke from my dad.
My eye is on Google Buzz for Mobile (or it would be - my iPhone has been trying to load the page for the last 10 minutes) but even there, Google has to lure me away from Foursquare and Gowalla.
Still, it’s early days so I’m not writing off Google Buzz just yet. Seems like the real value of any Google tool comes when it leverages Google’s vast amount of data so I’m gonna wait and see what else Buzz has up its sleeve in that regard.
