What’s the Buzz on Google?
Were you confused when you signed in to check your email yesterday and saw a new, multi-colored, pinwheel-like icon in your inbox? Join the club!
Built into your Gmail page, Google is describing their just-launched Buzz feature as “a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting.” But is it Google’s late-to-the-game attempt to claim a piece of the social networking pie? At first look, we think so.
Suddenly I have status-like updates clogging my Gmail page. In my opinion, it’s difficult enough to manage my Facebook and Twitter accounts without having to also alert my Google contacts of my every move/thought/action – I guess my Gmail was a sort of mini-sanctuary up until now.
So what do you think? Is Google Buzz a ‘must-do’ or an ‘I could definitely do without?’
I already get overwhelmed when I see the 100 emails I havent read in my Gmail box. Now I have another alert telling me that I have another 100 Gmail status messages that I need to view. This is time consuming!
I can understand why it feels cluttered. It still feels that way to me as well. There are ways around it so you don’t get e-mailed every time someone decides to share what they are doing with the entire population; albeit it being a bit complicated, it’s worth the time.
I still find it useful. For my profession I feel like it’s easy for all the coworkers to share documents, pictures and other things as fast as possible. We’ve already used it to our advantage.
Still, though, it needs some tweaking.
Thanks for the comments, Caitlin and Panda!
Caitlin – I agree. It’s not only time-consuming, but stressful!
Panda – I can see how it may be useful to certain group of people, like coworkers, but I don’t like how it mixes groups of friends. For example, i have work contacts, family, school friends, etc. as Gmail contacts.