Mashable bills itself as “The Social Media Guide,” so its launch Thursday of social layer Mashable Follow is a logical step. Here are some details of the public launch, and we’ll have more soon as Social Times gets an exclusive interview with Pete Cashmore, the founder of Mashable.
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Google announced via a mass email on its Gmail service that it reached a settlement in a class-action suit over privacy concerns with its Google Buzz social component to Gmail. Users of its email service will not receive compensation, but the search-engine giant will commit $8.5 million to an independent fund to support Internet privacy education. The Google Buzz email:
Google rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we’ve reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz, a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year.
Shortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case.
The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users’ concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the Web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.
Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before Dec. 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on Jan.31, 2011. This email is a summary of the settlement, and more detailed information and instructions approved by the court, including instructions about how to opt out, object, or comment, are available at http://www.BuzzClassAction.com.
This mandatory announcement was sent to all Gmail users in the United States as part of a legal settlement and was authorized by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Google Buzz launched at the beginning of February and since then, the product has seen a doubling in usage, just in the past month according to sharing service AddThis. Today, the company announced new buttons that enable website owners to have their content promoted via Google Buzz.
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The home insurance premiums of Facebook and Twitter users could be raised by as much as 10%, according to a recent report. Social media and location aware services such as Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Foursquare, Gowalla and others can alert criminals when a user is at a specific spot and not at their home.
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Several days after it was rolled out, some users may have already buzz out of Google Buzz and totally muted out Gmail Buzz. While some continue to use it as I for one keeps on getting buzz updates from those I follow. The good thing about this is that Google quickly responded to various privacy concerns and other so called buzz kills that were aired by users. Google has just dropped the auto-follow feature, disconnected Google Reader and Picasa Web Album and added a Buzz tab in Gmail settings so that you can easily disable Buzz totally.
But there are still other buzz kills that Google need to address although I don’t think that these may affect Google Buzz own demised. Yes, folks whether you agree or not, I think that Google has successfully came out with a killer social sharing/communication tool once again. And I could see users continously buzzing out in the coming days. Here are five reasons why Buzz will continue to make a killing in the social blogosphere. Read more
While it was expected that Google would use Gmail accounts as the center of users’ social graphs, the new Google Buzz makes it pretty obvious. Will Google eliminate Twitter or Facebook with this new service? Definitely not, however if you exchange emails with the majority of your contacts, Gmail could become a more efficient conversation aggregator. The one problem with Google Buzz will be the issue of combining email overload with social content overload.
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