Why I Have Ignored Google Buzz

When Google Buzz was introduced it took most of us by surprised, it added things without you agreeing to it into your profile, it added people to your feed, and it made it very difficult for you to revert those changes. Today, they say all that has been corrected and that people are now happy with the service, that is their story.

What happens when someone does not cause a first good impression, its very hard for me to accept somebody on my social circle after that person has screw things up from the get go. That is exactly how I feel about Google Buzz, I’m this is coming from a “Google Friends”. I use almost every Google product out there but I refuse to use Google Buzz.

I won’t say that I will never try it again, but for that to happen they need to get the Buzz out of Gmail. Gmail is very important to me, it’s almost like my physical address, I don’t give it to everyone and I protected and work hard to keep it clean. I’m also on almost every social circle that is available out there, so for me Buzz is almost like a new toy. Except that I want it out of Gmail.

Buzz can be an application by itself, just like Twitter, they even own a platform-website that copies twitter and what once was Pownce. Anyone remember Jaiku? That’s right, Jaiku was a project acquired by Google to, as far as I can see, let it die on the web. Buzz needs to get out of Gmail, I don’t care about their motivations for adding it to Gmail but that is a mistake.

The marketing implications for the mistakes they made at the beginning are so profound that a great number of Gmail users are turning their back at Buzz. Recently, I even heard Leo Laporte (from TWIT) commenting how he’s Buzz profile has almost no stream of information, no friends are using, and only people that don’t care about their initial mistakes are still using it.

That sounds to me like a total disaster, one would think that anything that Google does is bullet proof, this proves us wrong. Merge or rename Jaiku with the Buzz name and I’ll use it, remain a Gmail feature and I refuse. What do you think about Buzz? Did you know a service name Jaiku exist? What does Google needs to do to save Google Buzz? Share your thoughts with us.