5 ms·

I honestly love Buzz, but the rollout was terribly executed. It's rather ironic, since the product itself is one of the better designed social networking tools

I honestly love Buzz, but the rollout was terribly executed. It's rather ironic, since the product itself is one of the better designed social networking tools I've seen. Like Beacon was a real defining moment for Facebook, though, I think that the monumental amount of criticism that Google has taken over the Buzz rollout will teach them to be more careful about the second-order privacy implications from now on. It's just a shame that it took this much damage for them to learn.

malbiniak 17y ago
Can you articulate why you love Buzz?
- cgranade 17y ago
  For one, the use of open standards promises wide interoperability in the future. Right now, my first six tabs are Gmail, FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, Voice and Wave. I'd love it if those were somehow tied such that I could look in one place for my news, but if doing so didn't tie me to a monopoly. Second, I love Buzz for the same reasons I love FriendFeed. It aggregates my interactions, which goes a long way towards healing the massive fragmentation problem that I currently have with social networks. Third, the integration with Gmail means that, much like Mozilla's Raindrop project consolidates communication, my inbox is replaced by a more generic inflow.
  - malbiniak 17y ago
    Thanks! I didn't mean to be confrontational, and I appreciate you recognizing that. Do you think Buzz could replace your FF usage, or do you think they're serving different purposes?
    - cgranade 17y ago
      I didn't take it as confrontational. I've seen a lot of people mistakenly comparing Buzz to Twitter and being let down, but I think that FF is a much better comparison. As for replacing FF, it's still pretty far from doing that. There's a lot of sites it doesn't connect to yet, and it doesn't offer tools like "rooms" and "invisible friends" that help a lot in organizing social interactions. Right now, Buzz feels like FF lite or something, and excels mainly for its tight integration with Gmail.
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    the massive fragmentation problem that I currently have with social networks. I've always thought that the tendency to view social network fragmentation as some sort of problem, rather than as a rather useful feature, is a major blind spot for programmers. This Buzz debacle does nothing to discourage that hypothesis. I blame the database training. After you've spent enough time wrestling databases you begin to dream of putting the universe into normal form. You envision a world where every piece of data might be seamlessly linked to any other with some sort of super-powered JOIN command. This is the dream that leads people to think that single-sign-on across the entire web would be a great thing. Unfortunately, this dream is also Orwell's nightmare. I have a lot of friends. Some of them are elderly former carpenters who have never used computers. Some of them are college-aged aspiring hackers. Some know me personally. Some know me mainly as a pseudonym on HN. Some of them are middle-aged hippie folk musicians. Some of them work for major military contractors. Some of them are professors on the tenure track. Some of them barely have a high school education. Some of them are millionaires. Some of them are unemployed. Some of them are theoretical physicists, but many more of them loathed high school physics. I have no particular desire to put all of these people in the same room at the same time. The one occasion where I was compelled to approximate that even slightly -- my wedding -- was the occasion of more than a little stress, despite every single guest's friendliness and good cheer. Because it's really very difficult to throw a party where everyone you know feels equally welcome. I would not be surprised to discover that social networks are going to remain fragmented because most people like them that way.
    - cgranade 17y ago
      No, but fragmentation with respect to single individuals is devestating. Do I send someone an IM, an e-mail, a Twitter DM, a phone call, a voicemail, an InMail, a FB message or poke, a letter, a buzz or what? If I have confidence that the target of my communications will notice my message regardless, then that is a feature to me. Moreover, if I want to follow a friend of mine, then I rarely want to setup and maintain another account, as is often required these days. Within a given social network, there's lots of room for clique-forming. There's even room for fragmentation between networks, so long as communication between networks can happen in a relatively transparent fashion.
    - 17y ago
  - axod 17y ago
    >> "Right now, my first six tabs are Gmail, FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, Voice and Wave" Jeez. Do you manage to get any work done?
    - kerringtonx 17y ago
      Haha ... if only there was an extension that aggregated everything, right? You'd be able to turn that six to just one. :D

malbiniak 17y ago

Can you articulate why you love Buzz?

cgranade 17y ago
For one, the use of open standards promises wide interoperability in the future. Right now, my first six tabs are Gmail, FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, Voice and Wave. I'd love it if those were somehow tied such that I could look in one place for my news, but if doing so didn't tie me to a monopoly. Second, I love Buzz for the same reasons I love FriendFeed. It aggregates my interactions, which goes a long way towards healing the massive fragmentation problem that I currently have with social networks. Third, the integration with Gmail means that, much like Mozilla's Raindrop project consolidates communication, my inbox is replaced by a more generic inflow.
- malbiniak 17y ago
  Thanks! I didn't mean to be confrontational, and I appreciate you recognizing that. Do you think Buzz could replace your FF usage, or do you think they're serving different purposes?
  - cgranade 17y ago
    I didn't take it as confrontational. I've seen a lot of people mistakenly comparing Buzz to Twitter and being let down, but I think that FF is a much better comparison. As for replacing FF, it's still pretty far from doing that. There's a lot of sites it doesn't connect to yet, and it doesn't offer tools like "rooms" and "invisible friends" that help a lot in organizing social interactions. Right now, Buzz feels like FF lite or something, and excels mainly for its tight integration with Gmail.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  the massive fragmentation problem that I currently have with social networks. I've always thought that the tendency to view social network fragmentation as some sort of problem, rather than as a rather useful feature, is a major blind spot for programmers. This Buzz debacle does nothing to discourage that hypothesis. I blame the database training. After you've spent enough time wrestling databases you begin to dream of putting the universe into normal form. You envision a world where every piece of data might be seamlessly linked to any other with some sort of super-powered JOIN command. This is the dream that leads people to think that single-sign-on across the entire web would be a great thing. Unfortunately, this dream is also Orwell's nightmare. I have a lot of friends. Some of them are elderly former carpenters who have never used computers. Some of them are college-aged aspiring hackers. Some know me personally. Some know me mainly as a pseudonym on HN. Some of them are middle-aged hippie folk musicians. Some of them work for major military contractors. Some of them are professors on the tenure track. Some of them barely have a high school education. Some of them are millionaires. Some of them are unemployed. Some of them are theoretical physicists, but many more of them loathed high school physics. I have no particular desire to put all of these people in the same room at the same time. The one occasion where I was compelled to approximate that even slightly -- my wedding -- was the occasion of more than a little stress, despite every single guest's friendliness and good cheer. Because it's really very difficult to throw a party where everyone you know feels equally welcome. I would not be surprised to discover that social networks are going to remain fragmented because most people like them that way.
  - cgranade 17y ago
    No, but fragmentation with respect to single individuals is devestating. Do I send someone an IM, an e-mail, a Twitter DM, a phone call, a voicemail, an InMail, a FB message or poke, a letter, a buzz or what? If I have confidence that the target of my communications will notice my message regardless, then that is a feature to me. Moreover, if I want to follow a friend of mine, then I rarely want to setup and maintain another account, as is often required these days. Within a given social network, there's lots of room for clique-forming. There's even room for fragmentation between networks, so long as communication between networks can happen in a relatively transparent fashion.
  - 17y ago
- axod 17y ago
  >> "Right now, my first six tabs are Gmail, FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, Voice and Wave" Jeez. Do you manage to get any work done?
  - kerringtonx 17y ago
    Haha ... if only there was an extension that aggregated everything, right? You'd be able to turn that six to just one. :D