Buzz-is-the-new-FriendFeed

A lot of buzz lately on Google Buzz. It’s been tagged mainly as either a Twitter clone, a FriendFeed copy, or Wave Light. Its greatest asset is that it pulls from (and into) the ever-expanding Googleverse. It works with your Google Mail, Phone, Search Results, Picassa, etc. They don’t make this as blatant as they might. After all, it also brings in Flickr photos and Tweets, but I think of the integration as an advantage. And although there are certainly issues with the Googlization of services, Google also makes it much easier to move if you want to. Getting my data out of Google services–at least for now–isn’t as difficult as it could be. As a result, I’m using their services mainly because I want to.

Now, the downside. There was a lot of hubbub when Twitter started hiding @replies to people who you were not following. Many felt this impeded the conversation. Some adopt the .@ to hide this, or simply include the @address later in the Tweet. But especially if you follow any “stars” in Buzz, you can quickly get firehosed with replies. Some of these are good, but I don’t have the time to have them pushed to me.

The “and XXX more” is helpful. I don’t know if this is a new feature, or if I can control it. I would love to be able to decide which users replies to hide behind a folder and which are open by default. So, for example, while I don’t want to come immediately face-to-face with 150 replies to a post by Pete Cashmore, I’m happy to see a dozen replies to a Tweet (a “buzz?” a “bz”?) by Dean Shareski.

I suspect that when (if?) they user tested it they forgot about the “stars & friends” issue. It works well for friends, less well for stars.

Overally, I think I like it more than I do FriendFeed. So, for me at least, Buzz-is-the-new-FriendFeed. We’ll see if I abandon it as quickly…

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