So there’s been a lot of buzz about Buzz and I will be the first to admit that I’m not sold on it.  I like the idea of and how it easily hooks into applications such as Flickr and Twitter, but at the same time, I have a few problems with it.

First off, where are the options?  You would think, being a new feature within Gmail, there would be a number of options available for customization, such as disabling new ‘buzzes’ being sent to your inbox (keep them out of your inbox) or an easier interface to determine who can and cannot see what you’re buzzin’ about.  But, believe it or not, this is nowhere to be found.

My next gripe, and this seems to be the big issue of the day pertains to privacy.  A simple Google search of ‘google buzz privacy’ returns roughly 66,000,000 results in less than a tenth of a second.  Of course there are a number of Chicken Little’s out there who are afraid of everything, but I do think there is some truth to this claim.  I could go ahead and spell it out in my own words, but there’s no sense in recreating the wheel, so take a look at this article by CNET’s Molly Wood.

I won’t say that I am always first in line to embrace new technologies, but I definitely give them a fair chance.  So after playing around with Buzz for a little more than a day and reading what I have, I have decided to turn it off until I have a better handle on how it all works.