Is Google Buzzing?

Sure, social networking in the same tab as my email is convenient. The ability to follow or be followed by every person I’ve ever emailed, including ex-bosses and the stalker guy from high school, is a mixed blessing. Being able to aggregate sites (Blogger, YouTube, Google Reader, Flickr, and yes, Twitter) made me pause: I was already sharing what I was thinking in too many places, with too many people. How many interesting nuggets of information could I disperse in a single day?

One’s posts aren’t limited to Twitter’s 140 characters. One can post pictures and video too. Another mixed blessing: Do I want unrestricted rambling in my inbox every day? Then there’s Google’s promise that I can tag posts with geo-location. Which could make it easier to find user reviews on, say, a restaurant I’m going to.

Of course, it’s still early days. As we go to press, the service has been out for just a day, and a fair evaluation of its usefulness will only be possible when more users join in. Which shouldn’t be too difficult: Google’s got a ready-made user base in the 150 million people who use Gmail. (Though, from a quick survey of my address book, only a handful have jumped in so far.)

But there are already privacy issues being flagged. Users have buzzed in annoyance when they have found that Google already had them auto-following people (and being followed) without an explicit opt-in. And there seems to be no way to replicate what for me is a favourite aspect of Twitter: Following news organisations, authors, comedians, musicians, and the like.

Verdict? Plenty of buzz. No convincing sting.