I like the service for 3 reasons:

1) Easy access with little effort

2) Simple to learn and no frills design

3) Adequate compatibility for different publishing mediums (at least in my experience)

The fact that Buzz lives inside your gmail inbox is fantastic. After I’ve checked my emails, Buzz is just one click away. It’s just a matter of opening up the Buzz pane and you can quickly scroll over recent activity. A much simpler task than viewing your RSS reader. And just that one step more convenient than viewing your twitter account.

Another bonus is the simplistic design that Buzz has. No skins, themes, confusing colours. No multiple columns, boxes, side menus either. Now I’m not a facebook user but I have seen the interface, it’s actually part of the reason why I haven’t signed up. Just by looking at the facebook home page it speaks out to you: “EXCESS TIME CONSUMER” or “PROCRASTINATE HERE, YOU WON’T LEAVE IN HOURS”.

Buzz was quite easy to learn, much to do with the fact that it doesn’t do all that much. BUT THAT’S GOOD! Don’t turn it into a Drupal admin page.

The integration with social media publishing tools. I like the fact that youtube links automatically get embedded. I can share a photo from my picasa album, links to websites retrieves images from the site to display. I can send my blog posts and tumblr entries through. Buzz makes it easy to express myself and my interests. I like the fact that you can have “shorter than blog posts, longer than twitter entries”. In this case, it looks a bit like a stripped down version of tumblr, although I think Buzz is more fluid and connected with larger audiences. It’s an interaction rather than a viewing service.

Buzz’s Limitations

• Not so much limitations but things I would like to see.
• The possibility to log in without gmail. I can go to youtube.com and log in without being in gmail. Same goes for picasa, reader and calendar.
• Having the opportunity log in separately would be nice to have.
• Hide replies to a particular Buzz
• Hide people’s twitter streams, without having to block that person entirely. It would be nice to filter this so as to get that person’s more meaningful entries.
• A separate window for viewing a list of your followers. At the moment I have like 60 followers who I don’t know. I am checking there profile one by one but this takes time. Make it easy to view a list in one page and then be able to drop down a list of their recent activity in a fast sort of way.

I can’t think of any more limitations. I know some people are complaining that they don’t use gmail and feel left out. I’m sure they didn’t mind having to fill out forms when they signed onto facebook, myspace, linkedin, youtube etc. Get another email or google account and start exploring. Heaps of google users have more than one google account. Twitter made you sign up to use their service, you need to sign up to Buzz too.

I’m sure google will start to add more things to Buzz. I think they’ve thought this one out. It may seemed rushed to some but I think it came at a good time.

What else do users like about Buzz?