Google’s latest foray into social media has caused quite a bit of buzz. Having played with it for the past couple days I thought I’d put my thoughts in writing.

Firstly, this is obviously Google’s attempt to get on the hyperlocal, micro-blogging bandwagon in the same vein as Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook. Having said that, there a few things I like and dislike about the service.

I actually like the Gmail integration – its not very obtrusive and I find myself clicking on the Buzz tab several times a day while looking at my inbox. This is sure to get people participating (even those who never use Twitter or Foursquare but are on Gmail) I am also pretty impressed with the mobile integration within the google.com mobile site. The foursquare-esque ability to communicate my location (with a very accurate list of near by locations and businesses) is awesome – easy to use and nicely integrated with the iPhone experience since its there each time I open my browser. To make the experience tighter, they should also integrate it into the Maps application which I assume will be in the next iPhone OS version. Buzz also easily lets you pull data feeds from twitter, blogger, tumblr, etc which is nice and am hoping for a push service as well and integration with Facebook at some point.

Searching on buzz (in Gmail) is also pretty easy and well integrated. I can not only search my own buzz feed by the entire public feed without leaving my inbox!

I am also impressed by their roll out strategy and how they seeded the service. Seeding my followers with the most frequently used list of contacts and pulling other public data from GChat away messages and Google Reader comments is pretty cool. I am sure there are people for whom this backfired but I think overall this was a great way to “bootstrap” the service and get people participating before they participate.

I also glanced at the Buzz API that was released at the same time and love how open (read: anti-Facebook) it is. This will surely help in its adoption and scale as they are taking a paragraph right out of Twitter’s success story.

Now for things I don’t like about Buzz, and there aren’t too many. For starters the name could have been a bit more creative, but then again Google isn’t quite known for creative product names (Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Chat etc). It’s also a bit too tightly integrated with my online identity (being tied to my email account) which makes it difficult for businesses/startups to participate in it  – some of the heaviest users on Twitter. This would mean creating a common email account first for everyone in a business to access the service. Not a huge deal, but surely unnecessary.

All in all, I think its Google’s first great approach to social media. Let’s see if it fares better than OpenSocial.

Update: There’s been quite a lot of backlash lately on Buzz’s roll out and Google has made a public apology for all the privacy issues that occurred due to this roll out.