Information Madness

Google Buzz is a new feature of Gmail that lets you broadcast comments, photos and other types of content to your network of friends. Yes, it is very much a Twitter, Facebook kind of thing, and Buzz is clearly one of Google’s attempts at stealing some of the thunder of those two social networks.

The next time you log in to the Buzz tab in Gmail, you will be greeted with a box suggesting other people to follow.

Every suggestion will be accompanied with the option to "follow" or "ignore." Google announced in its Buzz Feed that these suggestions will be based on people you frequently e-mail and/or chat with. It also depends on your social connections on other networks, your social circle, and activity on Buzz. But only people with public profiles will appear as suggestions.

If you find a person you like, you can click a button to follow them. Or if you don’t like a suggestion, you can click an “ignore” button and they won’t show up again. Pretty standard stuff at this point, but it works. What was so great about Twitter’s implementation of this a few weeks ago was that it was front and center on Twitter.com. I started noticing a huge uptick in people following me, and I found a lot of people to follow that way as well. Of course, they still need a way to collapse that box so it doesn’t always have to be in your face. It looks as if Buzz’s box will have a close (and “Done”) button.

Buzz’s implementation may be slightly more controversial because once again they’re looking at your email/chat habits to suggest people to you. Sometimes these aren’t people you necessarily want as friends on social networks. But the ignore button should work fine there.