Some features just make sense. Google Buzz is one of them. It's nothing new really. It's just Twitter integrated within GMail, and with commenting, it looks a lot like Facebook. Yahoo! Mail did the same thing last year. The only problem with Yahoo's implementation is that it's not interactive. I can't reply to anyone's statuses, and they didn't suggest connections from my address book when they first launched. As a result, there's nothing for me to do with it. I don't want to do friend requests all over again, and without friends, Yahoo's service is useless. I only went back to it after using Google Buzz to see how the two compared. If I'm Yahoo!, I would just copy Google Buzz feature-for-feature. Everyone copies from everyone else anyway. There's no shame in that. Just do it.
Google Buzz is how it should be done if you're integrating social networking with email and chat. Immediately upon entering GMail, I have connections, and I could start playing around with it. What's nice is with each status, you can also email or chat with the person. Status updates, like emails, are also threaded, which is great for reducing clutter. Since I use GMail all the time, I'm already preferring Google Buzz to Facebook. Most of my friends use GMail anyway. Status updates, e-mail, chat, buzz - they work really well together on GMail.
I don't think it'll get Facebook users to convert, but GMail users will be happy that it's there. I'll still use Facebook because most of my family and relatives are there. I'm not sure if GMail will get more users out of this. When people think of social networking, they're still thinking Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. What GMail gets out of this is more engagement, and more time wasted from busy people like me.
After a couple days, I only have a couple minor complaints. I'm able to link to my Twitter account, but for some reason, it's fetching old tweets. There's also some privacy issues being raised by the media. After reading some of the articles, I finally went to my Google profile, which I didn't know I have, and made sure that my username wasn't showing up on the url. Afterwards, I added links and marketing text to Wopular.com, BookTeller.com, and RottenTomatoes.com. Since it's there, might as well make good use of it.
