Why Google Needs Buzz

Kevin Rose (born Robert Kevin Rose, February 21, 1977) is an American Internet Entrepreneur who first became an on-air talent and later as a co-host working on TechTV’s show The Screen Savers (which later became Attack of the Show! on G4) until his departure from the network on May 22, 2005. Rose is known for his Internet start-ups. He is the co-founder of Revision3, Pownce, WeFollow and the social-bookmarking website Digg. Rose also co-hosts a weekly podcast Diggnation with Alex Albrecht where they discuss the top stories from Digg.com.

Google announced Buzz fed days back, a photo/videos/link/status sharing service. The big news here isn’t really the functionality of Pownce Buzz, but that Google is boldly integrating this directly into Gmail – essentially taking the product from zero to millions of users in a matter of hours.  If Buzz is a success it will mean real competition for Twitter and useful real-time public data for Google.

After giving it a go for a couple hours, here are a few changes/feature requests for the Google Buzz team:

• It sounds stupid, but you need a simple url for public profiles, http://google.com/profiles/kevinrose is a mouthful. Imagine a CNN host trying to plug their profile and having to say “google dot com slash profiles slash larry king”, can we just have google.com/larryking? (side note: /profile/kevinrose should redirect to /profiles/kevinrose not 404)
• Speaking of public profiles, this entire page needs to be redesigned. Adding custom backgrounds and a design that feels a little less utilitarian would be a good start.
• This auto-friend stuff is just straight confusing.  I get it, but just because I’ve emailed with someone a few times doesn’t mean I want to auto-follow them. Where is the setting to turn this off?
• Is there an option to prevent the Buzz(es?, i?) from coming directly into my inbox?  When Buzz starts feeling like a task (email), that bothers me.
• Where is the ‘Compose Buzz’ link? Only within the Buzz tab? Can an email be converted to a Buzz? Having Buzz in my inbox but no way to compose a Buzz from my inbox seems odd.

Not sure where Buzz fits in my arsenal of social media tools, how often I’ll use it, or if it will eventually feel too much like unread email — but I’m happy to see Google taking social media seriously. It’s early days, let the attention/follower wars begin.

Have a feature suggestion for Buzz? Add it to the comments!