It’s been a month since the debut of Google Buzz. By now, the service should be available to all Google users. If you have not yet heard about Google Buzz, it is the latest social product offered by Google. The new Buzz app allows you, through your Gmail account; to share your thoughts, multimedia and social media feeds, as well as, to follow folks that you’re interested. Essentially, Google Buzz is Google’s definitive intertwined social media product.
Along with the Buzz release, Google has also made Buzz available for the iPhone by running a mobile Safari web app. This is similar to other rollouts like Google Voice where instead of going through the app store, Google just takes advantage of Safari’s HTML 5.0 capability to deliver a feature-rich web application.
To try out the service, you can simply point your mobile Safari to buzz.google.com. Once the service is activated in your Google account, you’ll see a new tab named Buzz on the top navigation bar along with other applications such as Calendar, Mail and etc.
Follow to Tap Into Someone’s Thought
Soon after you enter the app, Google Buzz shows who’s already following you and subscribing to your status updates. Don’t like someone to follow your update? You’re allowed to reject their follows. On the other way round, you can also follow them back to get any status update from friends. Just like Twitter, the Buzz service also lets you follow any public contacts and view their public posts.
Sharing Your Thought
Sharing status update shouldn’t be new to you if you’re a regular user of Twitter or Facebook. In basic form, it works nearly the same as the counterparts. The Buzz service puts up a prominent “Share what you’re thinking” textbox. Simply tap on it and you’re free to post anything. While Twitter shares your update with all users, the Buzz service provides finer control of your buzz. 
You can select to share your thought privately (say, your followers only) or publicly (anyone using Google Buzz).
I have been testing out Google Buzz for a month on both desktop and mobile versions. Using Buzz on iPhone is much more interesting.
So, what makes Google Buzz for iPhone different from the main version?
Buzz Around Your Area
Well first off, you have all of the features with the main (non-mobile) version. On top of that, the mobile version comes with some cool geo-location features. If you have the “use current location” turned on, it tags all of your posts with your current location. However, if you don’t want to give away too much information, you can also control it within Buzz. The really cool feature is the integration of with Google Maps. The “Nearby” feature allows you to see all buzzes around your current location and it possibly opens up a conversation with someone who you never meet before by using the comment feature. Imagine you are watching a football game and send out a buzz, it’s very likely someone who’s watching the same football game will comment your buzz and spawn a conversation. That’s something you can’t do on Twitter yet.
Google Buzz also lets you post message within the map interface. But please take note. Anything that you post through the Google Maps feature is in the public domain and can be viewed by all mobile users on Google Buzz.
Privacy Concern
When Google Buzz was first released a month ago, it aroused lots of privacy concerns. Since then, Google has released a number of major security enhancements such as disable auto-follow, block anyone from following you, etc. That said, if privacy is your top concern, Google Buzz and other social networking products may not be for you.
Where is the native Buzz’s app?
The design of Buzz web app is pretty good and Google already does its best to make the web app look like a real application. In terms of user experience and performance, however, it still can’t compare with a native app. So, does Google Buzz have a native iPhone app? At some point, Google may release a native iPhone app. For now, you can count on Buzzie, an unofficial Google Buzz app developed by Alberto García Hierro. The app is now available on App Store for US$1.99 [iTunes link].
Conclusion
All in all, Google Buzz does offer some cool features but it’s not a revolutionary product. To me, as a regular user of Twitter and Facebook, Google Buzz is just another social networking product. It’s no Twitter killer. Within my one-month testing with Buzz, I still turn Twitter to express my thought publicly or share with my close friends via Facebook. I already get used to the simplicity of these social services. This is very much the same for search. When I need to search something on the web, I turn to Google.
That said, Google Buzz is still a promising product and offers a great way to share information with others. If you’re a fan of Gmail, probably you’ll love the integration of Buzz. Anyhow, give it a shot and let us know if you love Buzz.
To see Google Buzz in action, you can further check out the video (though the demo is on Android rather than iPhone):
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