Google Buzzing...

Have you "buzzed" yet?  Yesterday Google announced and released Google Buzz.  I had not heard any rumor of this service prior to hearing that it was releasing so I was a bit surprised.  A bit more surprising is that Google implemented Buzz as a core component with Gmail, which means they didn't roll out a service with invites and slowly move users onto the platform through beta testing, they introduced the product to millions of users right away. 

Google Buzz reminds me A LOT of FriendFeed.  Very similar concept.  Share links, pictures, articles, thoughts, etc. and integrate across multiple social platforms to aggregate information.  Beyond that, however, Buzz goes mobile.  Buzzes can be posted with a tagged location where a user can write a review or simply a short message about where they're at, similar to Foursquare and Gowalla.  Initial thoughts are that it's a great platform and it's good to see Google finally jumping into the social space.  And by jumping, they're not dipping a toe in the water, the plunged head first.  I like the boldness.

So Google Buzz is a great concept, yes, and I love the aggregator feature aspect.  However, here are some things I'd rather see work different.

• Auto-following.  I don't necessarily want to automatically follow everyone in my contact list that has a Gmail account.  Just becaues they're there doesn't mean I want to follow them on Buzz.  Just give me a feature where Buzz will tell me who in my contact list is on Buzz and I can choose to follow or not but don't make it automatic.
• Gmail requirement.  In order to use Buzz, you have to have a Gmail account.  Not just a Google account, but a Gmail account.  Maybe Google wants to have a product that will get users to switch to Gmail but let's face it, our email address is what follows us for years, across state lines as we move about.  The idea of changing to another email provider is often a frustrating proposition.  Gmail can make this transition easy but people generally don't want to do it.  So why not allow Buzz to be standalone from Gmail so I can log in with my Google account and use the service?  Seems like this would limit the ability for users to adopt the platform and essentially creates this little "Gmail clique".  Aren't we always taught that cliques are bad for social integration?
• Contacts.  Google has frustrated me in this area for awhile with how they utilized the Contacts in Wave.  In Wave, there's a concept of Robots that can be added to a wave to allow certain tasks to happen or to add features to a wave, like a game or poll, for example.  Google adds these into my contact list and treats them just the same as any actual contact I may know.  They've done something similar here, where if I want to follow, say, Kevin Rose, he's now in my contact list, just mixed in with all of the other people.  I like my contact list clean as it syncs with my phone and in general I rely on it to be an accurate list of actual people I'll be contacting.  Yes, it puts it into the "All Contacts" so these won't actually cause too many issues but why not have a whole category called "Buzz Contacts" or something?  I know I'm still thinking of "contacts" through an old paradigm but I think most people do.  And by the way, why in Kevin Rose's contact record is his profile URL some weird string of numbers, clean it up so it reads like it does in the address bar.
• Isn't it weird that I follow myself?  I'm guessing this is the method Google implemented to get my own buzzes to show up in my timeline but it seems weird.  Even if you're going to use it that way, remove me from my followers list on the front end.  It's not hard to do.

I'll keep playing with it and see if I have more thoughts but so far I do like it.  I'm just not sure if it's positioned quite right to really challenge Facebook and it needs the ability to accept more connected sites (can they say "Facebook"?).  Also, the Gmail requirement seems to limit the ability for people to adopt.  I'm also really curious to see how Wave will interact here.