I think the biggest failure of Buzz is how confusing it is. I think this is one of the most misunderstood products that has ever been launched. I honestly believe about 90% of the complaints we've seen are misunderstandings of how Buzz works, and how the information that it sets up looks to other people.
For example, in my experience the autofollow doesn't reveal nearly as much information as some people expect:
1) It doesn't reveal anything if the person you autofollowed doesn't have a public google profile.
2) It never reveals the email address to anyone who already didn't know it
3) It doesn't really reveal on what level you have any contact with the person, because an outside observer has no idea whether you autofollowed this person or chose to follow them. For example, about 50% of the people I'm following I've never emailed before (and I still don't know their email address even though I've communicated with them through Buzz now).
There are some privacy issues with Buzz, but more than anything its biggest failure is being confusing.
I'd say the biggest failure is autoenrolling you, and then setting certain things public. Sure they could see my gtalk status, but I never set anything up to let my Reader be public, but it was by default. If I want people to know what I'm reading, I'll tell them!
This is one of the other points I think is confusing. What exactly is being shared out of reader? I use reader, I've got it linked to my profile, but when I view my profile as an anonymous user it just says no shared items. I never used the sharing feature of Reader before, so I really have no clue what it did previously. Is that was was shared automatically on enroll? I definitely don't see any way for anyone to see what feeds are in my reader.
Comments
I think the biggest failure of Buzz is how confusing it is. I think this is one of the most misunderstood products that has ever been launched. I honestly believe about 90% of the complaints we've seen are misunderstandings of how Buzz works, and how the information that it sets up looks to other people.
For example, in my experience the autofollow doesn't reveal nearly as much information as some people expect:
1) It doesn't reveal anything if the person you autofollowed doesn't have a public google profile.
2) It never reveals the email address to anyone who already didn't know it
3) It doesn't really reveal on what level you have any contact with the person, because an outside observer has no idea whether you autofollowed this person or chose to follow them. For example, about 50% of the people I'm following I've never emailed before (and I still don't know their email address even though I've communicated with them through Buzz now).
There are some privacy issues with Buzz, but more than anything its biggest failure is being confusing.
I'd say the biggest failure is autoenrolling you, and then setting certain things public. Sure they could see my gtalk status, but I never set anything up to let my Reader be public, but it was by default. If I want people to know what I'm reading, I'll tell them!
This is one of the other points I think is confusing. What exactly is being shared out of reader? I use reader, I've got it linked to my profile, but when I view my profile as an anonymous user it just says no shared items. I never used the sharing feature of Reader before, so I really have no clue what it did previously. Is that was was shared automatically on enroll? I definitely don't see any way for anyone to see what feeds are in my reader.