There is one really big problem with Google Buzz and it’s not all the privacy kerkuffle or that it is in integrated into Google Mail. And it’s something that is really good in Facebook and even better on Friendfeed: Output filters.
Buzz lets its user filter who gets to see which kind of content – for example I could set my Flickr photos for friends and family only or only annoy a certain part of my followers with my old Twitter updates. But it does not work the other way around. I can’t set which input channel from which user I want to see.
And the filter on the reading site is actually way more important than the filter on the writing side. I (and I guess many other people might think the same) would just like to plug almost every feed that I in some way or another produce into Google Buzz. As far as I am concerned, it’s a good place as any to aggregate my crap as any.¹ But yes, I can see where this can get very annoying very fast to those people who are already getting this here in their feed reader, follow me on twitter, read my shared items or see my stuff on tumblr.com. So that’s why I think that content readers that distinctively allow their users to import stuff need to have a way to filter pretty precisely. I might want to see the shared items of some people in my Buzz stream and not those of some others. I might want to hide certain weblogs – up until the moment there are comments on Buzz.
Basically I want Buzz to be a Friendfeed in my Gmail. Can we have that? Pretty please?

1. Well, my NoseRub profile is still the place to go, by the way.

Post Image (CC) Stephen Durham