Google's Buzz buttons: Driving adoption?
Has anyone else gotten the feeling that Buzz is an application looking for a use case? A lot of people said the same thing about Wave and, while I know there are corporate and workgroup applications, I still find myself using a Twitter client, sitting with Facebook open in another tab, and simply using Gmail. I want to like Buzz, but so far, the only really compelling application of the Buzz interface that I've encountered has been Socialwok.
However, Google announced yesterday that it was looking to drive usage and ease adoption of the aggregation/communication app with Buzz This buttons. According to the Official Gmail Blog,
If you want to add Google Buzz buttons to your site, just go to buzz.google.com/stuff, configure your buttons with a couple clicks and copy a few lines of JavaScript. Paste this code where you'd like the Buzz buttons to appear and you're all set.
In my ideal world, all of the people in my various networks would use Buzz and we'd spend more time in that environment than Gmail. Mature filters would be available to sort out the noise and we'd spend our days sharing links, clips, images, thoughts, and questions. It would be like what Wave was supposed to be.
We're definitely not there yet, but utilities that make it easy for people to get content on to Buzz and encourage people to interact with it are definitely a step in the right direction.