Has Google Buzz finally become usable?

Google Buzz has been one of those services that, ever since it’s launch late last year, has been plagued with bed press and low usage numbers. People talk about the privacy concerns, the overwhelming number of items that get sent to their inbox, the hassle with yet another social network and the fact that Google is just trying to capitalize on what people are thinking and doing at any given moment.

That’s funny… cause those are some of the same things people said about Twitter when it first came out. 2 Billion Tweets a month later, and the service is still gaining new users every single day.

When Google Buzz started gaining a bit of attention (scratch that, a TON of attention) I knew that it was not going to be what people thought it was. It’s not a Twitter or Facebook Killer, it’s just an alternative service that may also serve to compliment the other two. In fact, it seems to me that Google Buzz has evolved in exactly that direction.

Complimenting Networks

If you’ve been following me on Twitter for the last couple of months (which you should do, here and here), then you know that I currently have 4 different accounts that I use actively to manage my brand. @anotherguy is used for all of my mobile tech and Palm updates, @stifflered is for the music lover in me, @twintrview and @twintrviewee are for the weekly Twitter Interviews that I do with different people of interest.

At the same time, though, I read a lot of blogs and articles that are outside of the target interests of those four accounts.  Where should I share my favorite articles about marketing? web development? Joomla? WordPress? philosophy? productivity? photography? books? and social media? (to name a few)

If I was to put them all on Twitter, it would start getting a bit off of the topics that I have as the focus for those account, and I would start losing the followers for those specific topics that I worked to build a relationship with. When you over-extend yourself into too many topics, you won’t have the impact that you could if you focused a bit more.

Some people would say to start another Twitter account, but I don’t really care to do that either. I have four as it is, and adding another one will make things start feeling a bit uncomfortable (it’s already difficult to manage them all as it is).

Other Reasons to use Google Buzz:

• It sits in gMail, so I don’t have to log into another account.
• It’s integrated into Google Reader, and since I am a Feedly Power-User, it makes it easy to share the articles I love.
• It opens up a whole new target group of people who don’t use Twitter or Facebook actively that I can connect with.
• It’s Google, so that means as-close-to zero percent downtime as is physically possible.
• It works great on my Palm Pre

But there are other reasons as well (which the Scobleizer goes over in a great article, here)

Google Buzz vs. Twitter vs. Facebook

Speaking of that Scobleizer article, I have to say that I don’t think we should think of Google Buzz as a Twitter- or Facebook-Killer. To me, this is an entirely different service with an entirely different precept to build upon. You don’t just share what you are doing on Google Buzz, you open up discussions with your followers in near-public threads.

Twitter is a way to filter out the noise based on topics, and connect with people that talk about the things you want to know about. At least 30 people that I know and work with personally have unfollowed me because they don’t care about the topics I’m discussing. It’s nothing personal, it’s just how things work.

Buzz is about the discussion, not the status.

On Google Buzz, though, it seems that you connect with people based on the relevancy of the discussions that they start with you. If Twitter is used to tell people what you think, Google Buzz can be used to get to know those people and the thoughts they have on other topics. If someone gets too ‘loud’, you mute them. But you don’t necessarily mute them because they are sharing information that you don’t get into (cause you still want to read what they say in the discussions).

Google Buzz is for me

Whether or not you join me on Google Buzz (I hope that you do), I know that I’m going to be using it a lot more in the foreseeable future. If you are on Buzz, though, you should follow me, here.