But Google Buzz is different. I just didn’t like it that much. I understand it’s usefulness and future potential, I agree they have taken care of usability in many ways, but I still feel that they just didn’t deliver the subtle product. Buzz hurts my eyes. It distracts me. It’s not helping me, rather it’s hurting me. So finally I disabled it.

But here are few things that I didn’t like about Buzz -

1. Unread Buzz count

Why another count to show me that I’m slacking? Why another count to tell me that I need to complete another task – clear the unread Buzz count?

If you’ve noticed in above image, I try to keep my inbox count as low as possible. That doesn’t mean I necessarily read all emails, but I delete many not relevant emails when know I’m not going to have time to read them. I just don’t keep them there in my inbox with the false hope that I’ll read it some time in the future. You know, you never go back to your inbox to read the unread emails. Then why keep it there? The unread emails in my inbox are shown in the bold format, and it distracts my eyes. It tells me – give me your attention. Those unread email count, that is even more disturbing. I feel the bigger the count, the more burden I have. So I like to keep it simple – just keep that count as small as possible.

And now they added another count? Sorry, I don’t need that. But, an option to just hide that count will solve my problem.

2. Confused “Already following”

I totally believe in not re-inventing the social graph. We already have our social graphs on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It doesn’t make sense for newer applications to ask users to create another social graph starting from scratch. Let’s just leverage existing social graphs.

The good part is, Buzz has exactly done that, and that’s exactly what we’ve also done at Shopalize. But the bad part is, Buzz has made it even more confusing. As soon as you signup, you’re already following certain people. But you’re not following all. I didn’t see any obvious relation in people whom I’m already following, and people I need to follow explicitly. It’s very confusing how they decide whom I’m following and whom I’m not.

3. Popular activity view

I think this is the worst experience. Buzz count shows me that I’ve new unread activities, but when I click on it to see latest activities, I just don’t understand what’s new. I don’t get if the activity itself is a new one, or the comments or likes on an activity are new, or something else? It shows me the same Buzz activity with 100 comments again at the top. It’s very confusing to find the recent new activities. They should have highlighted these new activities.

Sorting activities based on it’s popularity is not a bad idea. But that should be an alternate option. The default option should be recent activities first. Sorting based on chronological order is a norm now. Aren’t we a Twitter generation now?

In general, I wasn’t really excited with Buzz when I first used it. I’m sure, they will get better in coming days. But I still didn’t find that it’s solving my information overload problem in anyway, but in fact it’s making it even worse. So sorry Buzz, I’ve to disable you until I’ve enough bandwidth to consume another stream of noise err…activities.