Hands On Review With Google Buzz

Maps and Other Features

Besides reading nearby comments in “feed” form, you can click on “Buzz map” to literally view comments pinned to a map with comic-book-style dialog box icons. Click one, and you’ll see what a person there had to say recently.

Although Google hasn’t yet flipped the switch on the version of Buzz built into Gmail, Buzz sent us e-mail whenever other users responded to our comments. Clicking around through them, we were able to edit a Buzz profile from the desktop.

Like a Facebook profile, you fill in basics like your name, occupation, city, and education, along with some Google-specific oddities like “Something I can’t find using Google” and “My superpower.” We were also able to successfully import pictures from Flickr, but sharing and commenting on them doesn’t look to yet be enabled.

As an important note, Buzz still behaves like a very beta product. We encountered several refreshes that never ended, missing pieces, and more than a few posts that never made it out to the world. It also behaved rather sluggishly on our iPhone 3G, especially when dealing with maps.

Conclusion

This isn’t Twitter. Although Buzz possesses a more-than-passing resemblance with the popular micro-blogging platform, deep location awareness adds a level of relevance and potential that Twitter doesn’t yet possess, despite an API that technically makes it possible. That said, Google still needs to prove that the other aspects of its platform – like photo and video sharing – really add up to something better than Facebook and other platforms already offer. We expect to evaluate those in time, but from our first encounter, Buzz looks like a promising product that could genuinely unlock new possibilities for existing social network users.

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