Google’s effort to launch a social-media network on top of its existing 143 million Gmail users had a rough first week. Within days of last week’s launch of Google Buzz, it was hard to keep up with users’ privacy complaints and the company’s rapid responses. Being automatically linked to contacts was a nonstarter. So was having those contacts revealed to other Gmail users.
So as the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant looked ahead at how to make Buzz more marketable, company executives also looked back, admitting it might not have been a good idea to beta-test the system only with Google employees.
“Getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild,” Todd Jackson, the product manager for Gmail and Buzz, told The Wall Street Journal on Monday.
Over the weekend, Jackson announced on The Official Gmail Blog that Google had further tweaked Buzz in response to user feedback, after an initial fix on Thursday that made it easier for users to block the followers Google matched them with, or those who had requested a connection.
With the latest change, Buzz will no longer match people up, but merely suggest that users make the connection. “You won’t be set up to follow anyone until you have reviewed the suggestions and clicked ‘Follow selected people and start using Buzz,'” Jackson wrote.
Google also disconnected its Reader and Picasa sites, which share users’ favorite web sites and photos, from Buzz, so that even if the settings are public they will not go automatically into the news feed.
“We’re very sorry for the concern we have caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback,” Jackson wrote.
Ryan Calo, a residential fellow at the Center for the Internet…