I’ve played with Google Buzz some the last few days and have some first impressions.  Frankly I’m still trying to find my equilibrium with social networks – the best way to interact with them.  I had heard about Buzz (from Twitter) so I decided to try it.  This involved doing something I hadn’t done for some time – log into Gmail.   I’ve never really been a Gmail user – as I’m used to my Outlook client and the multiple e-mail addresses I have.  In fact recently I merged 2 different outlook files together – plus and archive file.  I’m a pack rat when it comes to e-mails – keeping just about everything.

So that may influence my evaluation of Buzz – as it’s integrated into Gmail.  Frankly I’m pretty confused by Buzz – as it’s a bit overwhelming.  Right now I don’t think I can get past the expanded comments  - the long, long string of comments.  I’m used to seeing status updates with comments not taking over the screen.  Also I can’t seem to find any settings to control this – so it’s hard for me to use.  I haven’t researched how to use Buzz yet – but I’m wondering if I should have to.  I can still see how the key feature is that it’s integrated into gmail – a kind of one stop shop…

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out the best client to keep up with my social networks – as I now have 2 twitter accounts, personal facebook account, linked in account, multiple facebook fan pages.  I’ve been using Tweetdeck- but it doesn’t seem to easily support a 2nd twitter account.  I’m also trying Hootsuite and Seismic – which seemed to have unique features in each one.  My goal would be to have a client that easily supports all my different accounts – easily showing me updates from all the accounts – and letting me reply/retweet/comment on the posts (and see the comments).  I’m not concerned so much about posting – as I usually do that from another place (usually this site via ping.fm).

So to conclude I don’t totally get it – I’m a bit lost in the tool.  In fairness this is a brand new tool – has it even been out a week?  It may change soon for the better – Google tools will improve over time.  If you’re already in the Google stack (gmail, docs, calendar) then this could be a nice add-on.

« »