When Buzz Attacks

[andrewducker]

"Oh shit. I did something horribly wrong. My Facebook is set to update from my Twitter and blog accounts, Tumblr and flixter repeat updates from Facebook, if applicable, and Myspace bulletins get repeated to Twitter and Facebook. I have Posterous and Friendster feeds that update Facebook and Tumblr. When I post to Yelp, Foursquare or Gowalla, my Twitter account gets CCd and Google Reader monitors each of these. I have Reddit, Stumbleupon, Linkedin, del.icio.us and Digg accounts that get repeated, but I don't exactly remember the update cycle of all this shit. Just now, I added Buzz and now my entire system has broken. It's become a circle, somehow I've created my own internet Ouroboros. The circuit is flowing and I'm absentmindedly making 200 updates per minute. They're all about the same thing: a post I made announcing my trying Buzz. Only the posts are all slightly different because I stupidly use a random thesaurus filter to overcome Facebook and Twitter's anti-spam policies, and this is used along with a random introductory phrase and generated short url link. Dear god, what have I done? I think it's all become sentient and decided that the human is expendable and I'm not needed any more.

I can't stop the cycle. Oh fuck help me. God damn you Google."

From SomethingAwful, via octopoid_horror.

So far as I can tell Google Buzz is Google's Attempt to compete with Facebook's Status Updates - so that anything that your friends do _anywhere_ is available for you to see. But I can't be sure, because I don't have it yet. Bastards.

Comments

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Try again. I just refreshed my gmail tab and it appeared....

[andrewducker]

Dammit, they appear to have rolled it out to the gmail address I never use, but I can't see any way of getting it for the domain that they're hosting - I have ducker.org.uk email hosted with them, and I have andrew@ducker.org.uk set up as a google account, but neither of those gives me the option to join the fray.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

Buzz is scaring me.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

No Google Buzz, is Google's attempt to get even more data they can use to know everything about you (including where you're doing it from if the GPS tracking on the mobile version is to be believed), share it with the world whether you want them to or not and punt another gazillion ads your way.

Not touching it with a 20' pole. At least Facebook has the vague sham of privacy options. You just know that Google are going to use your data no matter what settings they let you think you've turned on - because no-one ever bothers to read all the T's & C's.

I'll get a Gmail account and Buzz the day I buy Apple - i.e. never!

[andrewducker]

I surf with adblock, post publically unless talking about very sensitive things, and generally want as much info about me in as many places as possible :->

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Yah. If you have a public persona for inoccuous stuff with just the littlest taint of subcultury stuff, no-one's going to go looking for the other stuff. (Cf. the Stasi, who were nervous about people they had nothing on....)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Adblock doesn't work on Facebook's newer ads because they're just text notifications :-p

[andrewducker]

I'm fine with that. text ads don't bother me.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

It honestly never occurred to me that people might use adblock because they didn't like ads in a certain format rather than just ads per se.

[andrewducker]

Text ads are fine, images are bearable. Moving images are distracting as fuck and flash ads that expand to cover up the web page I'm reading can go to Hell.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I do. I dislike pop-ups and flash ads, but have nothing against text ads, particularly google's adword stuff. Actuallly I often find the adword ads useful if I'm trying to buy something and have set adblock to stop blocking them.

[cdave]

I white list projectwonderful. It's clever homebrewed advertising platform, mostly used by webcomics and crafting sites.

On the other hand I block LJ ads as hard as I can. Achmed the Terrorist being the first one I saw when I moved from Basic to Plus.

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

Er. "No-one" includes yourself if you think Facebook don't use your data no matter what settings yaddayadda. Merely signing up is giving them permission to go nuts on data-harvesting you into oblivion.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

It's Friendfeed, really.

Actually, more specifically, it's Jaiku. For now, anyway.

Chris Messina mentioned in a comment to one of his ... buzzes, I guess? ... that they're genuinely looking to weave this out into a decentralized social web as time allows. It's got a bunch of open standards under the hood, including some that I badly need to look into and incorporate into my own stuff.

But of course, at the same time it's wildly scary because right now it's all going into Google's mega-database, and you're locked into Gmail if you want to use it.

[andrewducker]

You may find this interesting - particularly the mention of Salmon:
http://brad.livejournal.com/2408782.html

And yes - people have friended my "andrew@ducker.org.uk" address, but as it's not a gmail address it can't make posts or see other people's...

[sneakingyoda.livejournal.com]

Wait, it sent you an email saying "so and so tried to follow you on Buzz, so come to gmail and join us?" Because if it did, that is a little alarming, because no such thing has been mentioned to me about non-gmail emails I've tabbed for following. If I'm spamming people unwittingly with email invites to google Buzz, I'll be un-happy.

[andrewducker]

Nope, no invitations - I can just see via my profile.

[sneakingyoda.livejournal.com]

Whew.

[sneakingyoda.livejournal.com]

I agree with the scary bit. But then again, I'm not afraid of the Google mega-database.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

I really do not get it - I can add my other accounts (eg flickr, twitter) just by username. So I can add (say) "madcalculator" and any activity there shows up on buzz as if I had done it? I feel like I'm missing something here.. I'm sure it will make sense to someone.

[andrewducker]

It's more that I can sign up to view all of your stuff in one place, rather than having to subscribe to 25 different sources. I can say "Show me Sarah" rather than trawling the internets.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

but I can assign any account to my name, whether or not it is me? - does this not mean it's really easy to pretend i'm someone else?

[andrewducker]

Easier than before?

[cdave]

Does it do "custom friend groups" like LJ and facebook now?

I have a gmail account I'm quite happy with, and don't want to move wholesale to a new one, but it uses my real name.

At a minimum I'd want three groups:
Can_See_Real_Name
Can_See_Crazy_Dave
Can_See_Both

[andrewducker]

Yup, I can definitely see the benefits of pseudonymity.

You can share different thngs with different privacy, if that helps.

[sneakingyoda.livejournal.com]

Actually, near as I can tell Buzz = Facebook without applications.

I like it way better than Facebook due to the intuitive privacy settings and lack of applications, and so on.

But as always, with any social networking site, it's up to the user to be educated about the product, privacy, and personal posting practices.

And personally, nothing has ever beat Live Journal for my level of satisfaction.

There will be the great debate, which is better: Facebook or Buzz. Google has definitely rolled out a competitive product.

[mirukux.livejournal.com]

i wonder how long it'll take until you can link it into Google Wave.

i also wonder which OSS CMs will be the first to achieve integration. both WordPress and Drupal have OpenSocial and PubSubHubbub modules, but neither has anyone working on Salmon as of yet..

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Buzz is nothing like Facebook. Anyone can follow and read everything you post. You have no way of approving before they follow or blocking after they follow.

It also defaults to associating your real name with your buzzes and sharing your Gmail contacts with the world. I'm sure Chinese dissidents, queer people in Uganda, and, say, prochoice advocates in the States will adopt it en-masse.