Google Buzz got enabled on my Gmail this afternoon. Well what it did is it just picked some 45 people that I have in my chat list based on some formula that god only knows, and automatically added to my followers list. Its definitely not the people who I regularly chat with. It also have the option of adding other people from my contacts list and it suggested adding some others I talk to often. It’s similar to Google reader – the paradigm here is social networking and status messages instead of news articles and blog posts. It combined addictive aspects of Twitter and Facebook quite well: frequent status updates with the ability to “like” and “comment” on them. You can even update your status on Buzz through your status on Gmail – the same way it was done before.
This seems to me like a desperate attempt to piggy back on the popularity and massive user base of Gmail users. It could be because it has lost its nerve to bring the users into new experience through Google Wave. Google already owns www.orkut.com which is almost not known in US, it is quite popular in India and Brazil. Almost anything done on Orkut also reeks of desperation.This may dilute the use case of Gmail – which is to be a mail service. Windows Live already does this. There is more of it in Windows Live wave 4. But this feature is barely used on Windows Live. The same reasons the “social” features in Windows Live haven’t worked apply to Google’s current implementation also. Looks like there is an ongoing consolidation war amongst Twitter, Gmail, and Facebook for communication use cases like Social Networking, Offline Messaging, Status Updates, Online Chat.
May be it is very early to judge about the Buzz whether it really buzzess or not. As you said this feature exists in Microsoft and Yahoo a well before, but people are not used to with. Here is where the google dominates the others.All that what we can do is wait and see...but in my opinion Google buzz really buzzed me...and it added some contacts(which i really use very often) by default as the followers. You can follow the users on the Go....for which you dont need to create any other login.....
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siva ramakrishna
@RamaKrishna: Thanks for dropping by. Generally social networking sites need about three years to take off. But Google already has a captive user community, and they are already connected, and they have already created communities with in google environment (google groups, email-contacts, orkut, youtube...) So, from google point of view - they only provide different kind of 'interfaces'. Therefore, it is a question of whether the gadget is liked by people or not. So For Google, it doesn't need three years. it will either buzz or bust much sooner.
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