In this video, I’m gonna show you how to use Google Buzz. Now, if you already have a GMail account, then when you log in to your GMail account, you’d see a link here that says, Buzz. So just click on that. So since this is just a brand-new test GMail account that I created for this video, I don’t have any contact email addresses in my GMail yet, so therefore there’s no recommendation. But if you’ve been using GMail for a while, then Buzz will already recommend that you follow some of the users whom you have emailed very frequently in the past.
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But even if you have zero users in your account, you can always start following people. So how does Google Buzz work, essentially? It’s pretty much quite similar to Twitter, in the sense that you find and follow people, and people can find and follow you based on perhaps what you talk about on Google Buzz or based on the industry that you’re in, etc., etc.
So let me give you an example. I’m going to find some people to follow. So I’m just gonna click on Find people to follow. In this screen, you can see that I can either follow my existing contacts, which, in this case, I have 0 contacts – so I’m just gonna search for someone…I’m just gonna type in “John†and search for anyone named John. Okay, so now I can see all the Johns out there in the world, right? And I can add whoever I want to my Google Buzz profile, and right at the bottom here, it says, Show the list of people I’m following and the people following me on my profile. So by default, this is checked, unless you wanna change it, but otherwise, click on Done.
And now, if I scroll to the bottom right over here, I’ll be able to see all the latest Buzz from the users that I have just added.
Now, Goog le Buzz is unique in the sense that it does not only show you the content that users entered in Buzz itself; it also syndicates content from users’ blogs, Twitter accounts, Picasa, web application, etc., etc. So you’re actually looking at a summary of content from different users using multiple different applications, and it’s all centralized here in Buzz.
So let me give you an example…scroll down, and you can see that this post is actually via Twitter. So if I click on the link here, I’ll go to the actual Twitter page with this particular Twitter update. And the one right here is from Picasa; and Google will also put in the actual link to the Picasa web album…right? And some of these posts here can also be from Google Chat, and also from several different blogs as well.
So once you’ve added people to follow in your Google Buzz account, then you can start also updating your status message in Google Buzz, but before you do that, Google will ask you to confirm the profile that you want others to be able to see.
Now, this is really important because you may want to control what other users can and cannot see; for example, your address, your contact information, mobile phone number, etc., etc. So make sure you go to this screen, and when you’re satisfied with the level of information that you are going to reveal, then just click on Save profile and continue.
Now, let’s start putting in some updates, some links, etc. in Google Buzz. So I’ve written a very simple update here: “Wow, this is my first time using Buzz, it looks cool!†and I’m gonna post that. Okay? And I’m gonna close this notification here…alright. Now you can see my latest status update in Google Buzz itself. So if there are other users who have chosen to follow me, then they will be able to see all my latest posts in Google Buzz. Now, this latest buzz post only appears to me and the people who are following me; not Twitter people who I am following.
So there you go – that is a quick start guide to getting started with Google Buzz.