google buzz kill

February 18th, 2010 • posts i've written

Usually I’m a Google fanboy. I live inside of my Reader, store most everything in Docs, broadcast my location with Latitude, hardly touch those other search engines (or whatever silly name they’re calling themselves today), and I’ve been a Gmail user since 2006. If Google builds it, I try it.

But Buzz is threatening my fandom… because Buzz is ruining my experience in the other products – specifically, Gmail and Google Reader.

First off, my inbox is a terrible place for Buzz. I like to get shit done in there, not casually browse the pithy complaints and LOLcat attached musings of my friends from Twitter. I’ve already got an app for that, it’s called TweetDeck. My Gmail behavior is akin to a seabird plummeting from the sky to the ocean’s surface and firing away with a satiated gullet. Gmail is not a particularly suitable environment for social domesticity.

Let’s ignore for a moment that when I activated Buzz I was following dozens of people I didn’t want to follow and had many accounts already churning out content for which I’d rather not connect to my overall profile. Last night, wanting to dig around my sent mail items looking for a specific communiqué (one that I didn’t remember enough salient details to go immediately to search), I realized that my sent mail box is now full of my Buzz items – everything that’s been automatically piped through to my account. This made my hunt much more difficult and annoying. The best name for this type of emotional response is technoyed.

Then I went to my Reader for a momentary fix of interesting and was alerted that now all of my Buzz followers were followers inside of Reader – and wouldn’t I like to follow them all back in the Reader environment?

No. I would not.

My relationship to members of my social graph is predicated on context. That context, in our digital world, is often based around technological platforms as well as degrees of familiarity. And that context is not meaningless or devoid of function.

I have profiles across the web not solely because I have to, but because that varied context provides value for me (the context in which you get to know me on LinkedIn is different from that of Tumblr, and that difference is meaningful). Moreover, when a user does the work needed to find me across the web, that says something about their interest; that work is meaningful to me. And if I accept that connection, especially on multiple platforms, it says something about my relationship to that person.

As danah boyd put it,

Social technologies that make things more efficient reduce the cost of action. Yet, that cost is often an important signal. We want communication to cost something because that cost signals that we value the other person, that we value them enough to spare our time and attention.

The portal wars have now become the social wars – but services built to funnel our robust social graphs must learn how to preserve the heterogeneous qualities, not remove them.

What makes my relationship with you special might be platform specific, and that special quality should be preserved. The few people I share content with inside Google Reader are precious and I have no interest in diluting their awesomeness with, for that context, strangers.

I’m not quite ready to hit the eject button for Buzz, but if you are, here’s how.

Related posts:

1. google wave and the end of the destination web
2. my absence may kill you
3. twitter vs the google zeitgeist

Tags: Google, google buzz, Social Media

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