Earlier today, Google unveiled Buzz, a Facebook-like platform built into Gmail that allows users to see their contacts’ status updates, media, and favorite links — including via popular applications like Twitter, Picasa, and Flickr — as well as to “like” them. The social media tool also allows users to let friends know where they are, a la the popular application Foursquare.
The announcement, which came at 10 a.m., was eagerly awaited. Reactions to it since have been downright ugly.
Journalist Paul Carr tweets: “Trying really hard to give a shit about Google Buzz…. Nope. Nothing.”
Writes Om Malik of GigaOm: “I saw Google Buzz 2 yrs ago. It was called Xoopit. Damn even Yahoo has some of this already.”
“It’s late, boring, and lame,” says Business Insider.
Yahoo and Microsoft were also quick to smack down Buzz, which hints that they think more of its potential than industry watchers. Wrote Microsoft in a release: “Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.”
Added Yahoo: “It’s been almost a year and a half since we first launched Yahoo! Updates – a social feature that lets people share their status, content and online activities and stay connected to what their friends and family are doing on Yahoo! and across the Web…”
