Google Buzz

Google Buzz could open new ways for spammers to spam your Gmail. Having a Google Profile ID is very much like having your email address be searchable by your name. To have an identity on Google Buzz, you need to have a Google Profile and that’s where problem lies. You can only have your email id as profile username. For example if your Gmail address is my.name@gmail.com, your profile id will be my.name and your profile link will look like this: http://www.google.com/profiles/my.name. This puts your Gmail address open for spammers.

Add more to this, Google Profiles are Searchable! You talk about privacy issues with Facebook because they put your profile information open to all? Imagine your email address to be searchable by your name! That’s where your Google profile could take you. This is what Yahoo of old days had, but even at that time Yahoo allowed username to be different than the email address. They also offered multiple usernames for single email address. Google’s system has none of these options that even Yahoo of old days had.

There seems to be no way to avoid Gmail spam if you are using Google Buzz with personalized profile URL. Since you cannot bypass Gmail to access Google Buzz, you will have to log in to Gmail; system will take you to your inbox first before you could move to Buzz. Hence the option of Buzz-only Google account is out of question as well. Your route to Buzz has to be through Gmail and spammers will know that! They will know that there emails are most likely to be read and opened as well. This will encourage them and will bury your Gmail inbox.

How to avoid being spammed in Gmail (via Google Buzz)

There is, however, one way avoid this. Yes, one rather awkward way. Google gives you another option, a weird 21 characters long numeric code. You still can NOT choose a username of your own, it’s the Google who gives you a numeric string that will make your profile URL like: http://www.google.com/profiles/012345678901234567890 (number is fictional). So it is near to impossible to remember such long numeric expression, and to share it verbally.

So, it’s up to you to choose whether you want to have a twitter like username that is easy to share, easy to remember and more brand oriented or you could bear with a pathetic string of 21 numeric characters. If you choose earlier, you’ll make your Gmail address searchable in Search Engines; if you choose later, you will take branding or personalization factor out of your [Google] social identity. It’s up to you to decide but in both cases you’re going to be a loser. Google has never been so cruel!

Google Buzz is still being rolled out to Gmail users and is available to hardly 2% of Gmail users just after the release. There’s been mixed response in media regarding Google Buzz while Microsoft and Yahoo have claimed they have done this long ago and there’s nothing new in Google Buzz. A common user, however, is still confused whether or not Google Buzz was worth their time when they still had similar, more polished and more familiar services in Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. Here is our list of 5 great possibilities with Google Buzz:

1. Standard Data Feeds

Google Buzz has decided to go open web standards route to enhance publishing of public activity streams. As a result Google Buzz can be syndicated to other web services using standard data feeds sharing formats like Atom and MediaRSS etc.

2. Support for Full Email Address

In twitter you type @username to reply to a specific user, in Google Buzz you type @user@gmail.com. In Twitter, you can only reply to specific user on Twitter while in Google Buzz you could also be able to reply to a specific email address. So, Google Buzz could hit where Twitter has missed. Its @gmail for now but it could go on to @user@companyname.com.

3. Blog Comments Integration

Google Buzz supports Salmon commenting standard which means that if the link of a blog post is shared on Buzz, comments published on that specific link will also appear in Buzz. Similarly if you post comments on a blog post shared in Google Buzz, your comments will also appear on the blog post.

4. Support for Google Apps

Google Buzz can be used from within Gmail. Imagine if you could use Google Buzz from with Gmail for Business! That’s going to be very interesting, especially with launch of Google app store.

5. Google Buzz Ecosystem

Like Twitter, we may find plenty of Google Buzz clients enabling you to post publish your updates on buzz. For now we have web browser app for posting on Google Buzz but this will change very quickly.

Google Buzz is the latest buzz in social media. It’s Google’s take on Social Networking, a potential answer to Facebook and Twitter. Google buzz will be available within Gmail and you’ll be able to access it in very much the same way as you access your emails. Your Gmail connections, whom you email quite often, become your followers and you can share status updates, images, videos and other resources with them from within Gmail. Google buzz also supports services like Picasa, Flickr, Twitter and Google Reader but does NOT support Facebook.

Google has started rolling out Google Buzz to all Gmail accounts, so it will be available to everyone using Gmail within next few days. Up till the Google Buzz is not available on your Gmail, you can go through following video to get some details about the product and its features: