I have started to explore Google's new Buzz social enhancement to GMail. I don't consider this a twitter killer, but each system has pros and cons. I wanted to briefly put down some of my thoughts, and maybe get some feedback as well.
I Suck at 140 Characters
One of the things I struggle with on twitter is the 140 character limit. Over time I have developed a wordy style of writing that doesn't fit into a single tweet. I often spend more time trying to choose words that allow me to present my full thought than actually formulating my thought, and this frustrates me. With Buzz, I don't have that limitation. I still consider it a microblog like twitter, but one without the distraction of character limitations.
The Conversation is in your Face
One of my frustrations with twitter is following conversations. There is no simple way to do it. If you catch a response, it is fairly trivial to trace it back to the originating tweet. However, if someone asks a question, and you want to know how other people respond, the only way to do so is use twitter search. With Buzz, one person starts a thread with their "buzz", and responses are inline in the comments area. This makes it easy to see the conversation, even when it involves people you don't follow. In my opinion, this will also make buzz entries more useful in google search results.
Privacy
Currently I use twitter for my professional life, and facebook for my personal life. Sometimes one leaks into the other, but for the most part, I have made that distinction. Buzz is tied to my gmail contacts which come from mail, reader, or my android phone. This encompasses multiple facets of my life. This makes for a fuzzy line that I don't really have with the other two social services. However, buzz does have a nice security feature that makes it easy to have a post only be visible to one or more contact groups. This to me means that it can be both, and I don't have to worry about the fuzzy line. I have often wanted this ability with facebook, and am happy to see it here. The downside is now I'm going to waste hours organizing my contacts into appropriate groups.
Summary
In summary, I'm looking forward to following more people using Buzz, and seeing how discussions unfold. I could see tweets that point to buzz discussions, as I think the environment is more appropriate for that. The downside is, it doesn't have the discoverability that twitter has. If you follow someone that is involved in a conversation, you can butt in. With buzz, if you don't follow the person that started the conversation, you'll miss the whole thing. I decided not to have my tweets replicated on my buzz feed because I found the delay in google fetching the tweets makes the feature less valueabl. Also, the same post in two places would cause any discussion to be fractured.
Anyone else have any thoughts on Buzz? I think Google needs to put out an API sooner rather than later, as I can see tools like TweetDeck and Digsby integrating with Buzz, and adding value. The rollout is still in progress, but I'm curious to see what happens after the curiousity subsides.