If you’ve been keeping up with social media these days, which is becoming increasingly difficult and time consuming with all of the avenues available to us, you’ve maybe heard the BUZZ (and grumblings) about Google’s new social media linkage called…. well, BUZZ.
Social media sites are fantastic tools for hooking up with long lost friends, finding new friends, keeping tabs on (stalking) current friends and lovers, getting all the latest gossip on any subject you can think of and finding interesting articles, stories and video. The possibilities are almost endless. RowThree has been carefully linked with both Twitter and Facebook (et. al.) for some time and it really has been a blast chatting it up and sharing movie info with so many people all around the globe.
Google has, quite honestly, blown my mind over the past few years with almost every app and service that they provide (WAVE is a bit of a debacle, but leave that aside). If you’re not on Gmail, you’re using an inferior service. Period. The Google browser, Chrome, is the perfect browser that I’ve been searching for for over 3 years (and believe I tried alot of them!) and it actually exceeded my expectations. Enter Google BUZZ.
After playing around on Google BUZZ for about 2 minutes yesterday, I could tell that it continues in the excellence and innovation Google was shown us time and time again. It reminds very much of Twitter, but is capable of so much more; including posting pics and video. Not to mention you’re allowed more than 140 characters (actually unlimited I think) for your updates. Beyond the posts, followers can then comment and discuss with their own words and images. It takes everything that is great about Facebook updates, Tweets, YouTube and Picassa and smashes them all together in one great application.
Quick to join the fray, RowThree is now available to follow on BUZZ and as the days and weeks go by, we’ll continue to update and follow plenty of web sites and film fans while sharing all of the great news and op-ed stories we find in the online film world. BUZZ is yet another way to keep the spirit of RowThree expanding. We’re all about discussion here and BUZZ bridges all of us together with even more possibilities and furthers the horizon of discourse. I foresee BUZZ being quite the large bandwagon and one would do well to be on it. We’ll see you there.
For more information about Google Buzz, click here or check out the video below the seats explaining it better than I ever could in words…
Huge fan of RowThree but just wanted to address something you mention above about Google Buzz and Twitter.
Twitter is extremely versatile. You can use it to post video and photos. I don’t think there is anything that Twitter can’t do.
I checked out Google Buzz and wasn’t particularly impressed. What may cause Google Buzz to fail is that it doesn’t connect to peoples’ existing networks on Facebook. Twitter updates can be shared but Facebook is the biggie.
“I don’t think there is anything that Twitter can’t do.”
Kidding right? Don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter, but Twitter does not post video or pictures. You can link to video and pictures. You can’t embed a video in a Tweet. You can’t direct comment on a tweet – you can reply, but all of the replies on a Tweet are spread all over hell and gone. You can’t auto-share expanded stories from your GReader instantly. You can’t “like” a Tweet.
And it will connect to Facebook soon I’m sure. The thing is only a week or so old. Give it a chance.
After tinkering with GOOGLE BUZZ and seeing how they’ve gone with the kitchen-sink approach to slathering stuff in there, it is uncharacteristically messy for GOOGLE, and lacks the simple elegance of Twitter. Perhaps a few more revisions will clean it up.
I actually just turned off everything on my google buzz, followers/following, everything. It’s a mess and I dont want social media in my email.
I like the idea of having everything in one place, I just don’t quite get BUZZ yet, still haven’t watched the Orientation Video.
I take it back. Not a week. Two days. Give it a chance. But I too don’t like that conversations I start in Buzz auto go into my email. Hopefully they’ll fix that.
“So here is some more information about how Buzz works, and some immediate improvements we are making today based on your feedback.”
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/millions-of-buzz-users-and-improvements.html
It has potential, sure, but I’m on the “Google Buzz is a Mess” wagon right now.
I guess I just don’t see the “mess” thing. It looks pretty much just like Facebook right now.
It’s the lengthy and media embedded posts that do not allow (unless you have a massive sized screen) to get a lot without scrolling.
For something that is supposed to be a feed, it is not all that easy to quickly digest it. That is where Twitter’s strength lies. BUZZ is bigger and sloppier at this point.
(Of course it helps to ‘mute’ the creators (?) default threads which were long and ungainly and confused me (who are these people?) at first.)
Kurt, do you mean like the embedded Google Reader shares that you can expand?
That’s one thing I love about it, especially over Twitter – I hate that I have to click through on EVERYTHING on Twitter. A mess of links that don’t give me more than a headline at best is nearly worthless to me. Google Reader and now Buzz let me read the whole post, usually with media included, right there without clicking through, opening new tabs, waiting for pages to load, etc. etc. It just gives me the content right there.
Buzz still needs a lot of work, but for feed content sharing, it’s a hell of a lot better than Twitter.
Buzz is like the Internet vomitted in my Inbox. I fucking hate it.
Nothing goes into your inbox unless you start a conversation. In which case A) mute the conversation and it won’t happen again. B) I bet this will be a setting in days/weeks to come.
Amen Jandy. As a media sharing tool, it’s WAAAY better than twitter in terms of simplicity. It groups things together for you (by person) and isn’t just a bunch of random link to everywhere. It’s the full story that you want to read about along with some optional commentary by the person who originally shared it. And then you can discuss the post right there.
Yeah it needs some tweaking – and it will definitely be getting that. But for a three day old site, I honestly am baffled by the haters. Must be a “change is bad” thing.