1. Here’s what’s wrong with Google Buzz

    Editorial Note: There’s bigger problems in the world than the brouhaha surrounding Google Buzz. However, in a day and age where we’re being encouraged to be wary of what we share online, Google’s reckless miss-steps and decisions with Buzz are concerning. This article contains strong language.

    I’ll be blunt and say it: I’m totally unhappy with Google Buzz. For a product built by no-doubt very smart people, it lacks any realism or understanding of the social context it’s being forced into. Buzz is clearly a product built and designed by engineers. People who are no doubt very smart, and grok the usefulness of location-awareness. However the biggest problem is that they don’t understand the mainstream hesitance around sharing location data with people - and above all sharing it with Google. There’s no reassurance as to why you’re sharing your location, to what accuracy, and - incredibly - there’s no approval of who you’re actually sharing the data with because, to cap it all off, the same brilliant engineers decided that the best system to add social networking to was the most private and deliberately NON-public system known to man: email.

    Because, naturally, an entirely private and confidential method of communication is absolutely the best way to determine who the fuck I’d actually want listed as “Friends” in a social network profile. Like hell it is.

    Google: I want out of Buzz. I’ve been a 6-year Gmail veteran. I’ve put up with you automatically adding everyone I email to my Google Address Book [which was also entirely stupid]. But for you to then decide that my email address book should be the basis of a publicly-viewable social network account is bat-shit-crazy-bordering-on-irresponsible.

    Update: Some have said “You can edit your profile though”. I don’t give a rats-ass: I should be shown who will see my profile, and what data that will shown, before I can actually activate Buzz. Retrospective profile editing is a cop-out.

    Posted on Friday February 12th, 2010

    Notes

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