Spam Hits Google Buzz Already

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Despite only being launched this week, spammers are already targeting Google Buzz, the search engine's social network." If my buzz box is any indicator, the spammers are pretty much the only people actually using Buzz, and until Facebook can integrate, I wonder if that will change. The Times also has a followup on Google's Apologies following various privacy bumbles throughout the launch of Buzz.

Comments

Facebook Will Not Acknowledge the New Guy

[eldavojohn]

... until Facebook can integrate ...

The only way Facebook would integrate is if it didn't view Buzz as a competitor in anyway. But Buzz is a competitor already in some respects. The damned thing keeps asking me to integrate with my Picassa account. And it is already integrated with GMail and GChat. So you've got ad revenue, messaging and pictures ... now Buzz needs finer tuned privacy control and a developer platform to be a direct competitor with Facebook. That last one is a big sticky mess though and Facebook seems to have done as best as possible with it.

Hilarious that Google got bit on privacy concerns. Facebook learned the lengthy hard way on that one but it does give me hope that people are not entirely offering up their privacy to Google without batting an eye. Maybe the general public is not as doomed as we thought?

Anyway, there is no way in hell Facebook would validate Buzz's existence by integrating with them. It would just give their users who already use GMail a chance to seamlessly transfer over to Buzz while keeping up with their archaic Facebook contacts. It would be potential suicide for Facebook to do such a thing if/when Google keeps up expanding Buzz.

Personally I think Buzz targets another market but losing any number of users to Buzz does not make sense in anyway ... devoting time and resources to that endeavor makes even less sense. Facebook will sacrifice interaction between it's large user base and the few Buzz-only people in the name of maintaining its superiority. Really it's sad because the user loses out of being able to transfer and interact with users on Buzz ... but when you're as big as Facebook, you just don't care about those kinds of integration competitor benefits and 'features.'

Re:Facebook Will Not Acknowledge the New Guy

[dswensen]

"Someone please try again to explain to me"? Seriously?

People like to talk about themselves. On the Internet and in everyday life. This doesn't really require explanation, nor do I think you actually want one.

You want validation that you're a brave crusader holding your ground against the shallow, attention-whoring masses. Which is ironic, given that you apparently want someone to convince you in the hope that they'll earn your valuable approval (which you won't give -- your mind is clearly made up.)

As the poster above said, if you don't want to use it, don't. There's a lot of utility to social networking that has nothing to do with what you ate for breakfast, but like anything else, Sturgeon's Law applies. The good stuff is rarer than the dross but can be found with only a little effort.

Totally Riding That Buzz

[eldavojohn]

I think Buzz targets people who desire a very simple interface. It seems to perform a lot better on my slow machine than Facebook but is negligible on my main box. Honestly I haven't experienced any Spam on Buzz at all. Don't you have to follow the Spam bot or hacked account to get the Spam?

It's missing a lot of options, I guess time will tell if that is the intent or merely TBD yet. I do like how it's integrated with Google Reader. I share a lot of my news offerings with my followers. I don't like that it wants me to integrate with Picassa. I simply have too many Google contacts (some Slashdot readers I've never met!) to have them looking at my pictures!

So the one thing that Buzz has over Facebook is Aardvark. I signed up for that three or four days ago and have asked a question (with very positive results) and answered a few questions. I didn't get quite what I wanted out of answering questions although I think the people that answered my question did a pretty good job. How this is different from Yahoo Answers or Wiki Answers seems to be that it's tightly integrated with Buzz and GChat. Also it actively finds things for you to answer. I'm guessing what Google has with mining your e-mail and chats and searches it will use to locate experts for your questions and also pair you with better questions you're more capable of answering. A lot remains to be seen as to whether or not this is an actual beneficial addition or some more of the bloat a Facebook application would have to offer one.

Yes, I have already made two book purchases off of those suggestions from my question. Note that a problem with GChat caused two of my questions (which I tried to designate as separate) get slotted into one question. I could just hear the software thinking: the second question is about authors, he must be continuing his thought.

Personally I'm not leaving Facebook for Buzz. But I'm not decommissioning Buzz. I'm keeping it as a sort of News social network much like The Auteurs and Afternoon Records Community are for my movies and music respectively. Granted none of these niche networks get as much time as the all encompassing Facebook, they still exist harmoniously in the bag of sites I visit. I recognize I'm probably an outlier though.

Re:Google Buzz's Skyrocketing Usage

[WinterSolstice]

I have to agree with this. I found buzz to be just about ideal - it's unobtrusive, simple. and more of a 'feed aggregator' than a twitter app.

One of my friends just uses it to share his twitter feed with those of us not using twitter. Another just uses it for occasional comments on his flickr photo stream. I use it just for the occasional IM type comment that I would want to send to 3 or 4 people (not things like "I'm watching the game", but things like "everyone who bet on x owes me money", or "did you see this news story").

Sure, it's kinda pointless. But it does a really good job of combining several disparate feeds of pointless into one simple console that I already have open anyway.

It's a win for me.