Google Buzz copied FriendFeed’s worst features, why?

February 15, 2010 By Robert Scoble

OK, now I’ve had a bit of time to play with Google Buzz and everywhere I look I see a badly-executed copy of FriendFeed.

With two important exceptions:

1. Google Buzz actually has a lot of users and much better information flowing through its veins. There’s a reason that FriendFeed doesn’t have many users: it has some very anti-user features that retard user adoption (back when I was excited about FriendFeed I kept hoping that FriendFeed was going to fix some of their issues).
2. It has pretty nice location features built in, especially if you use Google Maps on Android.

But, they made some horrid mistakes. Let’s detail them:

1. They are infatuated with real time flow (items flow down my screen) but unlike FriendFeed they didn’t give you an option to turn that off. For users who are following a lot of people, like me, that makes Google Buzz unusable.
2. They love comments, but that leads to the chat room problem I talked about earlier. But Google Buzz actually made comments worse than FriendFeed did. They didn’t give us moderation capabilities. They don’t let you block people right from comments like FriendFeed did.
3. Unlike FriendFeed they don’t let you group your friends into lists. This makes using it with more than small groups very frustrating and pushes me back to Twitter where list support is an important part of my experience now.
4. They didn’t give us any filtering capabilities. FriendFeed got very close to having good filtering with its real time search engine that let you do things like “show me all items with the word ‘Obama’ but only show me items that have four likes or more.” That was very powerful, Google hasn’t even tried yet to do real time search or filtering like this.
5. Adding friends is frustrating, especially for someone who is getting added by hundreds of people a day. Google could really have innovated here, but they didn’t add anything Twitter or FriendFeed doesn’t have.
6. On Google Buzz, as with FriendFeed, A-list users get too much engagement and attention and that keeps putting their posts at the top of the feed. Google copied FriendFeed’s worst feature, that where items that get engagement keep popping to the top. I desperately want a strict reverse-chronological feed so I can just see items once, and not 300 times as they get engaged with.
7. They copied FriendFeed’s like feature, but didn’t do the most important thing: let me see all the likes by a single person. Over on FriendFeed I can see what Mike Arrington has liked, or commented on. I can’t do that in Google Buzz.
8. I turned off bringing Tweets and FriendFeed items into Google Buzz. Why? Because unlike on FriendFeed my readers can’t turn off just my Tweets. That makes Google Buzz very noisy.
9. They copied FriendFeed’s second worst feature: that comments bring people into my view that I don’t know, don’t care about, and Google Buzz gave me even fewer ways to control or moderate that. I wish there were a way to hide all comments until I want to see comments, for instance.
10. They also copied FriendFeed’s lack of curation features. For instance, Google Buzz has no way to bundle their items together into a single URL.
11. They copied the worst part of FriendFeed’s UI: the boring look but didn’t copy FriendFeed’s best part of the UI, the clean and simple feed. I keep getting boxes and other crap in my feed which reduces the number of items on my screen.
12. They copied the photo feature from FriendFeed, but, like FriendFeed, didn’t give me any control over size of images or anything else, either.

As I type this I’m at 37,000 feet and watching CNN. On CNN they showed off that Google Buzz is hard to use. Well, duh. They copied FriendFeed’s worst features and didn’t innovate.

And I won’t even get into all the privacy issues others had with earlier versions of Google Buzz.

So, Google, why did you copy FriendFeed’s worst features? Is there any way we can work together to find a better system? I really find Twitter and Facebook lacking too, and keep hoping someone brings out a dramatically better system but haven’t seen it yet.

The world needs a curation system, for instance. But until you stop copying other systems’ worst features I don’t feel you’ll even understand what users want.

Filed Under: Web

David Lloyd

Are you insane? Friendfeed added features over time. Just like Buzz will. You can’t expect everything in release 1.

Billy

Why not? This is Google. Don’t they have endless resources? At the very least, they should have done a far better job on the first release considering they has so much practice, and negative feed back already.

http://BestSellerAuthors.com Warren Whitlock

Six days use is a long term test in Scoble land. Buzz is over, what's next?
robertnlee

“Unlike FriendFeed they don’t let you group your friends into lists. “

Uh, yeah they do. The same lists you use in Gmail work for private buzzi, too.
http://cookiemouse.posterous.com/ Leighton Cooke

Buzz does seem to have more and more of a chat room feel, which is beginning to get a bit overwhelming. It's starting to be a bit of a time waster.
http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

Hmm, are they sharable in public? Like Twitter's are? Can I check out your lists? I can't figure them out and if I can't figure them out I doubt many people can.
http://kenzoid.com Ken Kennedy

I grant and agree with most of your points, Robert, but I do think that we give to need Buzz a bit of time in which to iterate. Copying is no substitution for running the service yourself, and seeing what works. Many of the FF features you're talking about (the powerful search, for example, or the real-time flow) weren't present in the first iterations of FF either. I'm kind of liking Buzz, though I agree it needs work. I hope Google does respond to feedback well; they appear to be at least doing it wrt the initial user experience…they've changed that already. I look forward to see where is all goes. The “bones” of Buzz are great, architecture-wise.
http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

Chat rooms ARE time wasters. They increase noise and if you don't have ways to filter that noise out, or control it, it gets rid of the smart users pretty quickly.
Sean

Good comments Robert. I liked buzz a lot at first but like you, just found it to be too noisy, ESPECIALLY since posts keep getting pushed the top when a new comment gets added, as you complained about. I follow you on buzz and your posts were ALWAYS at the top. Obviously I want to see your posts but not the same one over and over again as people comment. The number 1 thing they can do to fix buzz for me is just have a reverse chronological order by post date, not comment date.

I turned off buzz because it was just too much noise. I think with another couple weeks they will fix most of the serious issues, including this one. Then I will try using it again.
http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

OK, but why copy FriendFeed and make it worse? I don't get that.
http://www.chaim.com tinjaw

I agree with everything said here. I find Google Buzz unusable because it is almost like getting a raw data dump with minimal filters. I am looking forward to somebody using the underlying technologies and making a better Buzz than Buzz.
matt_wilbanks

Your #6 and #9 points are what keeps me away from Buzz. If you follow someone like @Mashable, then all their posts (that receive tons of comments) are all you see. It would be nice if they would at least add a feature allowing you to collapse the post and hide the comments. Then you could at least view the other people you follow easier.

Holly

Good point, Matt. I already follow Mashable on Twitter and added them to Buzz. When I later logged into Buzz and had to scroll and scroll and scroll past comment after comment for Mashable posts, I unfollowed them. A collapse for comments would go far for something like this.

http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

Sorry, if you are going to copy another system at least don't make it worse.

http://www.twitter.com/_AnastasiaC_ Anastasia Crosson

True, you can’t expect to hit all points “with release 1″. However, one would think that a power house like Google would at least get some of it right the first go around.

Google has a dispensable amount of consumer research data. That being said, their product should have been more operable for users.

I conceed with the fact that integrating one’s social networking platform into real-time Google Maps definitely has a cool factor. That might be fine for most people. But for people in the same predicament as scobleizer, those that use social media in their profession, an operable platform is key!

If there are two things that do NOT go together, they are: real-time social media and CLUTTER. And frankly, this is what Google Buzz has created.

Not to mention that Google Buzz lacks what all social media platforms thrive from – many-to-many communication. Why choose this platform with such a limited audience (Gmail subscribers), over one with a broader audience. One that is more capable of giving valuable feedback at that.

http://www.twitter.com/_AnastasiaC_

AshAne

Google should have done a Beta release for this. If gmail can be in Beta for years, why not buzz?

http://vidboo.com/?sea=Integrate+Twitter+and+Facebook+with+Buzz+in+GMail Google Watcher

For Gmail buzz another exception is that it was released in the invitation only mode.
idk

Apple’s Fanboys Hates Google and Microsoft…
I Know

http://kenzoid.com Ken Kennedy

Groups are primarily for limiting the “publicness” of a Buzz…it's not the same as a Twitter list. It's for letting you share with a smaller group, not for organizing the feed. That would be a good idea as well…I expect it's coming, as something along the lines of tags in GRreader.
http://twitter.com/jeanjean1941 jeanjean1941

helloo welcome good morning
http://cookiemouse.posterous.com/ Leighton Cooke

I agree with the FriendFeed point too, Robert. I started using FF then gave up because of the noise. Twitter still rules the real time flow for me.
http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

What twitter, friendfeed and buzz are missing is the right combination of explicit and implicit relationship control. Fred Wilson covered the concept well, but he didn't suggest a better tool.

My thoughts are have explicit following, lists like twitter, likes like friendfeed, and semantic/social gravity for implicit relationships. At all times the user must be in the driver seat of their social and information gathering experience. Balancing the two utilities of information and social is part of what defines our us as users, and we may switch from one mode to the other for work or play.
robertnlee

You can't figure out making groups in your Google contacts list? Considering
who I'm talking to, I find that hard to believe.

And no, private lists are not likely to be made public anytime soon, I
wouldn't think, especially after the mass freakout this week over “exposure”
of data users hadn't bothered to make private and that did no harm to
anybody.

I did argue with you on only one point – Buzz is lacking a lot of features
you'd expect to see. However, Google's also working pretty quickly on
changes, and I like the Buzz experience enough that I'm going to hang around
for a while and see what comes of it.

I actually like the lack of control, although some moderation abilities
beyond blocking utterly and muting threads would be nice.
http://twitter.com/jeanjean1941 jeanjean1941

helloo welcome
http://kenzoid.com Ken Kennedy

Fail forward, Robert, fail forward! Not everything works…people have ideas, and maybe, just maybe their preferences aren't exactly the same as yours. *grin* You've also got Google Wave, which certainly ISN'T a copy of other apps, and no one can figure out either. Grouping/tagging (Twitter-style lists) would probably definitely help, but the “groups” that they are using for privacy purposes are integrated closely (ie, they're the same) as your Google Contact groups, and so aren't really usable for the same purposes. A group for purposes of privacy and a tag for purposes of organization aren't necessarily the same sort of attribute.
baahar

I mostly agree with the points made.

What is annoying me the most is that every new comment made to a post makes the post appear on top of my feed again, so I have to see the same post over and over.
http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

Wave is an infinite strip that anyone can type on at anyplace. It sucks because it is slow (they are working on scalability problems right now, execs at Google tell me) and because they stuck it in a crappy UI (email, come on!) and because they didn't include some very needed features like permalinks so I can point you to where the value is on one of these strips. Many people are using Wave, though, and many like it even though I don't. I'm seeing a TON of complaints about Google Buzz, though, and it's even gone onto CNN.
http://www.wedocreative.com Zee.

+1
http://abrah.am Abraham Williams

Why would Google get it right the first time when you make these nice lists of what they need to fix/implement?
http://twitter.com/klandwehr kim

Agree with a lot that you said, but there is nothing you noted that can't be fixed. Google has been using the product internally for about a year and the problems you noted just didn't come up, maybe problems aren't visible until the product is released into the wild. Also lets face it you are not the normal user.
http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

Everything can be fixed, but why didn't they improve on FriendFeed while they were doing the copying?
baahar

That said, I think that we should give Google some time to respond to the feedback. After all, no service can be perfected before being tested in the real user environment.
http://twitter.com/Lucas_Wyrsch Lucas_Wyrsch

Dear Robert,
I think that Google Buzz is at the very beginning and that it will be an ongoing task to fine tune it.
What about #hashtags?
Don't you miss the #hashtage? I agree with you about the user lists on twitter, I also miss the community options that #hashtags do offer!
Have a wonderful and successful time!
Best
Lucas

http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

To tell you the truth I hate hashtags. I hope Google Buzz doesn’t copy those. What do we need instead? Real tagging. Why can we tag a photo in Flickr but we can’t tag an infoatom in Google Buzz? Lame.

http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

To tell you the truth I hate hashtags. I hope Google Buzz doesn't copy those. What do we need instead? Real tagging. Why can we tag a photo in Flickr but we can't tag an infoatom in Google Buzz? Lame.
hhorton

I agree Robert with most of what you said.

Google, being who they are shouldn't have put Buzz out without engaging the big heard bulls like yourself!

I mean, really, why add more noise to the Internet.

I think Google has a limited time to get it right before people turn off Buzz. I understand that the Google corporate culture is to get something working and put it into Beta for a long time, but how effective can that be when you start getting a lot of momentum only to find that most users get tired of the Beta in a week or so and never come back to visit the product when the issues are fixed.

Or, are we so far on the front of the adoption curve that our expectations are just silly?
http://www.marketingformavens.com Chris

For me, there is too much noise on Buzz. When I use Buzz, I use the mobile version which does a much better job of letting you navigate posts. I find the desktop version to be unusable and I'm not following a lot of people yet.
http://twitter.com/rhidajat Robert Hidajat

I was initially annoyed with the same issue as you do with #6. But then I found that I can Mute a buzz and that seems to solve my problem. After I read a buzz and the comments at the time, if I'm not interested in reading more comments on it I just mute it and I won't see it bubble up again.

I wish Google would put a more accessible mute button though instead of burying it in a pull-down menu.

One thing I like about the non-chronological order in Buzz is that if I'm not on Buzz for a few days, I can catch up on 'good' (most discussed/commented on) buzzes. On Twitter, if I'm not on all the time then I'll miss a lot of good tweets.
jase

you're judging everything to early. i used friendfeed too, and it's crap compared to buzz, so what version of buzz are you using? your own special one that's mentally slow? Because that would be the only way it's worse than friendfeed.
http://www.rutgerblom.com/ Rutger Blom

Good points, Robert. I agree with all of them. Unfortunately how good or bad the service is from a technical point of view is not relevant. Just look at Facebook that first now starts to get a bit useable after they copied Friendfeed features (and did it wrong a couple of times before they got it right). It's all about how many users are using the service. That said. Google does show it's listening to its users and has already made some (necessary) improvements based on user feedback.
http://scobleizer.com Scobleizer

OK, smarty pants, what are the 10 features that Buzz is a lot better than FriendFeed at. I already gave you two, so can you come up with another eight?
http://twitter.com/RBLevin RBLevin

Also, if you want to send private Buzz, guess what? Your friends are NOT an available list. You have to manually create and maintain that in Contacts.

And:

* Public Buzz cannot be turned off on your Google profile.
* Worse, the Buzz tab is now the default on your Google profile.
* You can't see who you have blocked; no ability to manage that.

And let's not talk about the complete inability (and missed opportunity) to attempt to be a universal social client by allowing users to access and manage both inbound and outbound feeds with connected apps.

I'd also like to be able to filter in or out certain connected app feeds.

I like the UI, and I like the potential. But it is an incomplete implementation. A lot of false starts, most never seen through to their logical conclusion. Hopefully Google will be responsive and listen to these crits and ideas, and bring the best to the fore.

Then again, Gmail still doesn't let me sort my mail.
http://www.sitesketch101.com Nicholas Z. Cardot

I actually turned Google Buzz back off. I don't like it very much at all. It's kind of annoying to me. I'm sure that I'll turn it back on after a while, but right now I'm not really sure if I like it very much.
http://twitter.com/RBLevin RBLevin

Hashtags are stupid and a waste of a character.
http://twitter.com/arnov Arno de Vries

Google Buzz also lacks the possibility of adding the (Youtube) account of my own choice. I like the mobile version however, with which you can post location based comments and tips easily.
http://www.cheapriver.com/ Jaap

Your absolutely right about the fact that the worst feature is that post pop to the top as soon as somebody comments. When I followed you, you were basically the only one in my buzz list all the time because you get so many comments.

Other feature that should be improved is the fact that muting is so slow. Removing the buzz takes 3 to 4 seconds.
http://twitter.com/quidpro quidpro

In google's contacts groups are more like tags, allowing multiple groups per contact, correct? My wife can be family, friend, coworker, etc all at the same time. Adding a “public” tag , a “private” tag, or whatever I want to manipulate from within buzz seems easy enough. Though I haven't tried it yet…I may not know what I'm talking about.
http://kenzoid.com Ken Kennedy

I hear what you're saying, Robert, and I think are points are actually fairly close together. I like Buzz, but I see a lot of issues, and it surprises me that some weren't caught earlier if Google has been using it internally. But I'm guessing a lot of that is due to the fact that it integrates so closely into their other systems like contacts, etc., so the discontinuities that jump out for others weren't as visible to them.

As for comparisons to Wave, I grok it's uses and differences, but again, we're comparing a tool that “regular folks” have been able to use for months vs. something less than a week ago. There were plenty of people wondering how to use Wave those first few weeks, and honestly, still are. I know people that use it too, but I also know lots of people who have completely abandoned it. We'll have to see! I hope they open up the APIs and advanced features (like Salmon, Activity Streams, etc.) soon…that'll be really interesting!
http://nilsgeylen.com/blog Nils Geylen

Totally agree with 6. Buzz looks like the same page forever to me.

That and the fact that I can't make out the difference between posts showing up through auto refresh, the post count in Buzz items, and items that are in my inbox (though filtered to a label I called buzzes).

Needs work.
http://cjsparno.com cjsparno

Robert, I made this exact comment yesterday in my Buzz stream. You hit it right on the head! Some posters (who I like as people, but don't care for as posters) will post something trivial, like “let's see what happens when I post this meaningless comment” and because of their celebrity status, will get 200+ equally useless comments. And of course, as you eloquently pointed out, this just elevates their feedback to the top of my list, adding to the noise and reducing signal. While I agree that some of the worst of FF seems to have been copied over to Buzz, I am still hopeful that things will continue to improve and new feature will be added. I just hope that the smaller but equally important voices are not drowned out in the volume generated by some of the posters I am now seeing with little to say and a lot of bandwidth used to say it.
http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

You know why Robert. The friendfeed startup team was like a pack of psycho coding ninja's that just happened to be brilliant. It's a tough act to follow, even if you're the big Goog.
http://jalada.co.uk Jalada

Given how quickly Google have been changing things, they're probably coding changes based on your blog post as we speak…
29travels

Excellent points about Buzz. Most people don't see that its almost an exact copy of Friendfeed without Groups and other FF features you mentioned. Whats more shocking is that this is from Google where we expect innovation not seen anywhere else. The last few products have had major hype but really did not live up to expectations. On the other hand, Microsoft has come up with some solid products without any hype or even serious media coverage. I am talking about Bing maps and today's announcement of new Windows Mobile.
Another thing is the release of Goog Buzz seems to coincide with the new data out that Bing has gained some market share while both Google and Yahoo went down slightly. So that news was all lost in the buzz.
cashwilliams

I agree with your post 100%

You, Leo, Jason, and Mashable are flooding my Buzz since everyone is commenting on your posts. This means I never see something important to me, my fiance's first post for example!

Also, I can't skim through the posts like I can do on twitter, since the comments are expanded by default.
phxmarkrichards

I must admit I jumped on the bandwagon when Buzz first came out. But after a weekend of playing around on it, it is too “busy” for me in it's current form. There have been some good discussions I have ran into (even some not involving Buzz), but with the way the time line is handled, and as noted, no way to collapse or delete comments, it is too time consuming for me to keep up with.
http://www.technovia.co.uk ianbetteridge

What's interesting is that I'm sure some data is being tagged behind the scenes – for example, when you share something in Google Reader (which ends up on Buzz) you're invited to tag the content.
http://www.basbasbas.com/blog/ Bas

“Excited about Friendfeed”… You were nothing short of evangelical haha

Google Buzz copied FriendFeed’s worst features, why?

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