SortiPreneur makes the case that Google knows the concept of "open" and they're building Buzz as a platform. I originally didn't like the fact that they didn't integrate with Twitter directly (which I'm sure they will do, I agree). So, no argument there. However, regarding this:
For me, the bottom line is, for a gmail user, the amount of social insight residing in gmail far exceeds facebook. This may not be true for users who split up email usage for personal and professional communications.
Yes, precisely - this is the scary part! I don't split up my email accounts, or rather, I may have different email addresses, but the interface I use is one gmail account. Most people are not going to be comfortable with email being mixed in with Twitter/Facebook. I totally agree that Buzz is going to be a "platform". With the new promises of a separate googlebuzz app, I might use that as an "outward facing" communications platform. I like the platform aspect (to unify Twitter/FBook comm for example), but I feel uncomfortable with email & chat being mixed in automatically and treated as equal communications channels on this platform.
For me, email/chat should be separate, and not have the risk of mixups (e.g. facebook contacts getting info into my email life such as who I email). Privacy controls are not enough - they can, and do, fail:
- Bugs : Already the fact that Google Reader users could see items even if they were blocked from Buzz
- Changes to privacy policies in the future. Remember the recent Facebook fiasco, where the "redesigned" privacy controls by default changed all of your information to public - and also even now some information remains unhideable.
- The user can easily make a mistake - many users complained about Buzz allowing people who email them frequently but whom they definitely do NOT like like their ex-husbands or landlords, seeing their updates.
This problem cannot be solved with more careful quality control or better user design. It's a fundamental problem of the same platform being responsible for your private email and public internet life. People have said that "privacy is dead" but I don't think they meant this in the sense that they expect the world to read their private emails. So even in the modern world, there is still some expectation of privacy. Splitting up the platform at least at the user level, if not at the company level (in other words, still having Google as a company to run both email/chat and public communications services) would allow the company to profit from both sides but with some control over privacy. Google for example could do it like ads in GMail (maybe if you email a lot of about cars, you might get car-related ads on your buzz listings) - this still compromises some privacy but they could put in controls such as no indecent ads and no sensitive subjects would be shown. This isn't the same thing as showing your email contacts to the world.
For myself, I'd like to have 2 platforms, one for public-facing and one for email/chat. I realize of course that 1). This isn't good for the companies making money from it. and 2). this isn't necessarily the distinction that everyone might want. They might prefer work vs social (private & public together) division, or no divisions. But it just happens to be what I want.
