An interesting discussion this weekend led me to think about Google Buzz. It seems that around me people remain very negative about it. Among critics we can find its complexity, its disturbing GMail integration, or just a “Pff-yet-another-twitter” kind of reaction. But still, having thought about it for a while, I do think that Google Buzz is awesome: its UI, its integration with other Google services, its feature set – Google Buzz feels a bit like a Twitter 2.0 for me… So what is the problem?

A twitter clone, but better

• The biggest improvment: NO 140 CHARS LIMIT! No more crypted tweets
  

  Facebook-style replies and “likes”

• Media integration: while Twitter chose to rely on Third Party services for videos, pics, geoloc… Buzz integrates them. No more service switching, you can send pictures or videos right from Buzz.
• GMail integration: I am a GMail user so I was very pleased to have Buzz right next to my inbox, and as I said here less tools = more productivity
• Facebook-style replies and “likes”
• Much more potential users thus followers (GMail users = 170 millions, Twitter half as less)

Gimme back my followers + no disruptive innovation

• The main feedback from Twitterers is that they would have to rebuild their social entourage in Twitter. All Twitter users do not use GMail. But I think that there will be quickly some bridges built between the 2 services, as there are tools to cross post on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed…
• Complexity – look at the video below… This is how Twitter was presented some years ago.. Could we make a similar video about Buzz??
• But I think the biggest critic might be that there is nothing really new about Buzz. As I said, it only feels like a Twitter 1.5 or 2.0… We lack a “Wow” feature, there is nothing really disruptive. They could have for instance focused on Geo Localisation as said on Techcruch

After Google Wave, Google social experimentations have thus been quite unsuccessful. But Google is a big cat so I am sure that Buzz will land on its feets though it did not find its public yet. Besides I still think that Buzz can itself be a bridge to Google Wave: teaching users on sharing content in real-time… Wave + Buzz has a big potential of dramatically changing the way we collaborate.