The other day Rob Watson asked: Do we need another social network? He was referring to the launch of Google Buzz, which, according to the blurbs:
Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you
find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set
of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s
always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this
network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the
people you email and chat with the most.
Unusually for me, I was slow in latching on to Buzz but it quickly became apparent that:
- It is a time sink
- It has serious privacy implications
Email is at once indispensable yet a drain on productive time. Suw Charman-Anderson has a very good discussion on the time issue arguing that:
Email is causing significant problems for people, not just because of the volume of email we get these days but because dopamine circuits in our brain encourage us to seek new information and cause us to check our email more often than we realise. Every time we check email, we waste about 64 seconds getting back into doing what we were doing before. Some people check email every 5 minutes. That’s an 8-hour day each week that we waste in mental limbo. Email is a significantly counter-productive tool yet it’s our default for almost all communications.
By adding in a new source of random reward – Buzz – Google have made their inbox even more addictive and unproductive. Not only do you have a new unread Buzz messages count to lure you into checking and rechecking, Buzz also tangles up Buzz replies with your email in your email inbox. Whilst that may seem sensible from an engineering point of view, or for someone whose inbox is quiet or beautifully organised, for me and the many people like me for whom inbox is a daily struggle, this is a disaster. I just do not need extra fluff filling up my inbox.
I am much more concerned about the privacy issue. As I have written before, social networks are not always as good as we'd like at protecting our rights to privacy. In this case, Google had stepped way beyond anything I could recommend as acceptable. Quoting Silicon Valley Insider:
The problem is that — by default — the people you follow
and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at
your profile.
In other words, before you change any settings in
Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see the people you
email and chat with most.
The implications for business users are clear.
Those Gmail users who do NOT use Google Apps for Enterprise (GAPE) are Buzz enabled. The curious will likely switch it on which is when the problems start. If you are using GMail but are NOT using GAPE but have switched Buzz on, then you need to go through a fairly laborious process to not only turn Buzz off, but purge your Gmail profile of followers. Full instructions are here at Cnet.
If you are using GAPE then Google plans to implement Buzz at some future date. It is imperative that you understand what this means because as I said on my personal weblog:
Make sure you REALLY understand what it will and will not do. The last
thing you want is for Buzz to effectively mine and expose your internal
contacts list and blast that out to the world at large.
I am not the only one sounding warnings and it does seem that Google is listening. According to Read Write Web:
Google announced that it is making it more obvious to new users that these lists will be public and will offer clear instructions to turn the public disclosure of this information off. In addition, Google now also allows Buzz users to block people from following them, even if they haven't created a profile yet.
Even though Buzz now makes it clearer that your public profile will include a list of users and makes it easier to turn this feature off, this remains an opt-out feature. We think that it would be far better for Google to make this an opt-in feature so that those users who don't read the disclosure information closely when they first use Buzz won't inadvertently share information they would rather keep private.
More broadly, Google, along with many of the newer service providers often get a free pass when they drop the ball. In Google's case, they've been around long enough to know better about such things. However I continue to gasp at their lack of basic understanding around risk. They have been successful in drawing large companies into the Google orbit by providing a compelling alternative to Microsoft Exchange. For that they should be loudly applauded. But at its core, the company does not seem to understand that 'free' has a price.