Much as I don’t want to get excited about this, I’m afraid that my initial impressions of Google Buzz may have been confirmed. According to the Gmail Blog, more than 9 million posts and comments have been created as millions started to jump into the latest social craze two days after it was launched. Looks like Google made a hit with Google Buzz.
The Google folks must be smiling right now as they might have really done something good in Google Buzz. But then, since this is primarily a Gmail add-on, the statistics is not really surprising. Gmail users are automatically signed into Buzz when it was rolled out. It was not an opt-in feature after all.
What Google should probably be taking note of is the fact that the Google Buzz mobile web app was able to generate 200 buzz per minute. Now, that’s quite an achievement.
And to think that we’ve been hearing so many negative feedback about it. In fact, the feedback are so urgent that Google quickly rolled out some refinements to GBuzz.
These refinements include:
- More visible option to not show followers/people you follow on your public profile
- Ability to block anyone who starts following you
- More clarity on which of your followers/people you follow can appear on your public profile
These are of course in direct answer to the most commented negative feature of Google Buzz pertaining to user privacy.
So, what do you think? Is Google Buzz a hit or a miss? Too early to tell? Or you just don’t care at all?
