What’s wrong with Buzz?

It all started with Twitter. And a bit of a Facebook. Got spiced up by LinkedIn and Yahoo Meme. We had Blellow on the way, Friendfeed, even the recent hype – Foursquare – can count in. Instant micro-exhibitionism, so you can generate all the buzz you need. But wait. Now you have the actual Buzz, for all your social pleasures. Enjoy?

I don’t think so. Well, on the plus side, I really like that it’s inside GMail. Although I’m running mine on Google Apps and IMAP it to my Mail app, so I’m kind of outside the main Google ecosystem, I find it nice not having to jump around to check what’s going on in the social stream. Here’s my oldschool mail, here’s my newschool buzz. I can quickly read through and reply to all, and get back to work.

Another plus is the integration with the said Google ecosystem. Feed items, Picasa images etc. all available for quick sharing. But all this goodness and integration is really overwhelmed by how the Google Buzz interface is utter crap. Ever since that UI designer of theirs, Mr Bowman, left them, they had been looking good but not exactly cut the mustard, if you know what I mean. First the Wave, now this? Come on, if I can spot UI problems within minutes of using the service then definitely somebody didn’t do any testing…

What am I talking about? Ok, let’s rant:

1. Posts design. I mean, now it looks like some text spit by an XML feed. It’s even worse than what we got in Google Reader.

2. React menu on the bottom. So who was behind the idea that I need to scroll past these long buzz discussions just to take part in them?

3. And while we are there – collapsing comments. Why does Buzz do that only when there are hundreds of them? I would like to see 3 recent comments, and no more. Or even better, no more then 500 characters of comments. But no, I see tenths of long comments. Scrolling through this endless chitchat makes me lose all the Buzz. Like once I said, why 140 char limit is so good? because people don’t know when to shut up.

4. Do you know why Twitter works? Because it’s simple. Do you know what Buzz looks like? Google groups :P

5. “Is it just about the UI? Don’t you have anything more?” – you ask. I say “Hey. Look how Facebook users lament over UI changes. It’s a social network, nobody cares what’s behind, they want the experience.”

And no, you cannot follow me on Buzz, I don’t write much plus I’m not public :) But you can follow me on Twitter, I am @f055 and will be happy to welcome you among my friends. So let’s just all plug our Twitter feeds to Buzz and move on. Like Microsoft was late for the internet, Google is late for the social. Twitter & Facebook FTW!

PS. All puns, flames and rants intended, although not without a little sense of irony.