Great post, I read http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/ptech/02/11/ca… and than I read your post, total opposites. You put Google Buzz in a more realistic perspective. It crosses the line of personal data sharing and it doesn't give the user enough control.
I like the idea behind Google Buzz, but it needs to change.
If you could offer a few pointers to Google about how to make Buzz better, what would they be?

Also the idea of social content similar to Pandora is ingenious, you should invent that!

Plus, I like being exposed to new ideas and good content. I just dont want it to be at the expense of content I already enjoy.

However if we can set expectations now and educate people, we can avoid this rubber-band future. That way people can choose what data share and marketers can make informed decisions on product offerings that actually add value.

So yes we are on a slope. Yes Google has a powerhouse of all sort of scary personal data. And yes there is no easy solution.

I would love have a learning algorithm that could initially give feedback on what I like and didn't like.. kind of like a Pandora for social content. But I don't want this to prevent me from seeing content I want to see regardless of how much I socially engage with it. Just a thought.

Great post, Anna.

The gist is that Google will now index the content your online “friends” post to the web and then allow you to search that content. Seems innocent enough, except for many of the points you mention above–how does Google know who my friends are? But TheGoog thinks it's OK to reach into your feeds and the feeds of the folks you've interacted with (friend or not) and allow that data to be searched. And you make a very good point (that I didn't think about) what happens to that data after it's indexed? Who gets to see it/use it/exploit it? And, by the way, it indexes your content without asking and I haven't found a way to opt out yet.

I have a bit more on this in my post, but I'm glad I'm not the only getting a little irked by all the Googleness in our lives now. I'm going to go ahead and use Buzz for a bit and see how it goes. Though I'm starting to think that we're already sliding down a slippery slope. :

I think we need something to aggregate and filter our social data so the best and most relevant content rises to the top of the pile. How do we do that? I don't know, but Google seems to understand that both filtering, aggregating and measuring streams is where social content is headed.

Do you agree?