Faceless Blog

It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong…fortunately, I’m pretty big. After talking extensively with a few geek friends, we have come to the conclusion that, while the concept is interesting, Google Buzz is, at the moment, broken.

It’s a privacy issue that’s concerning us at the moment.  Stories are already circulating the internet; a fellow whose landlord auto-followed him, a woman whose followers included her abusive ex-husband, etc.  There are settings to filter out followers.  You can, for example, set Buzz to allow only a certain portion of your contact list to follow you.  The problem is…these filters don’t appear to work.  (at least, not consistently)  So, if you’re concerned about your own privacy, or the privacy of your friends/followers, I’m advising that, for the moment, you turn off Buzz.  (This can be done by going to the Gmail site and scrolling to the bottom of the page.  There’s a link there titled “turn off Buzz.”)

As I said, I like the concept of Buzz, but it looks like, for whatever reason, it was just released too soon.  My friends and I are working on it, to see if we can get the filters to work.  If any progress is made, or if further announcements are made by Google, I’ll be sure to note it here.