Yet again, Goole has released another Beta program out of the hands of a a select few gmail users accounts. On Tuesday February 9th, 2010 Google released Buzz to ALL gmail account holders. What is Google Buzz and what is it all about? Why do the major social media sites have to worry?
Well, it is somewhat like Twitter in a sense. It allows live updates of information shared between your social networking circles. You can share you thoughts and multimedia links to your friends through your mail account. It shows updates about users statuses and lets others follow you. It very much resembles Twitter in a sense and may become competition if Google plays their cards right.
Some critics of this say it is an invasion of privacy and has sparked dispute among many concerned people. What is all the fuss about? Well, Google uses your email contacts and connects them into your network. This sounds god, until you start to think about all your contact. There may be people you do not want to share information with or do not want others to know about. You may have a secret lover, personal information, doctors names, etc. in your emails. Why do you want to share these people with your social contacts?
What is Google’s response to this? If you have something to hide then don’t use the web. They are taking all complaints into consideration as this is still the testing phases of the program and they have many bugs to fix and tweak before releasing it to the masses.
In a switf and timely manner (Feb 13, 2010), Google has recently updated their privacy status after many compaints were filed. You now have the option to disable Google Buzz and limit who you share your information with. This will help calm the storm of criticism it has received.
Google Buzz has the potential to be monstrous in its quest for fame in the social media sphere. Twitter has approximately 30 million users worldwide, quite an impressive number for a new site! On the other hand, gmail has 38 million users in the United States alone! This means that Google Buzz will have more users than Twitter once it is made live for the world! Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites should be worried!
Since the release, there have been 160,000 new posts per hour! This is something to fear if you are involved in the social media sphere, mainly Facebook and Twitter.
About Brandon Leibowitz
