Google Buzz "antisocial networking" exposed details of “estranged spouses, current lovers, attorneys and doctors”

From Google: Antisocial networking. FT.com:

At the root of the problem is Google’s decision to use Gmail, with its 175m active users, as a launchpad for its latest push into social networking. All users were enrolled as soon as they clicked a link to look at the service, and many found the names of those they corresponded with most frequently by e-mail – usually a private list – became the basis for a public “social network” of contacts on Buzz. That risked exposing the details of “estranged spouses, current lovers, attorneys and doctors”.

Doctors should be very cautious when using social media to communicate with patients. In general, "friending" patients on Facebook, Buzz and Twitter is not a good idea at the current level of social network services, and is best avoided.

It may be irresponsible to answer patient questions on blogs, Twitter, Buzz and Facebook because no complete data for an informed evaluation and decision can be collected.

Google Buzz from a medical blogger's perspective

The blog post below was brought up by the following discussion:

Ves Dimov, M.D. - Observation: The more seasoned doctors are just joining Twitter at a time when "everybody" is leaving for Google Buzz... :)

Anne Marie Cunningham - I disagree! Twitter is still much more useful for me.

Ves Dimov, M.D. - Twitter is useful because of the great community you can find or establish there. The technical side - not so much.

Jeffrey Benabio, MD - What's your early take on Buzz, Ves?

And here it is:

Google Buzz works surprisingly well for me at this point. Considering that everybody was saying that Google "does not get social media", I did not expect that.

With Buzz, I can finally publish longer micro-blog updates on science and health news that are "blog-able", i.e. they can be used for blog posts later.

Buzz is integrated with Google Reader and has a somewhat more "human feel" than Twitter.

You can edit your posts and attach images. It's a richer media application - for example, BBC podcasts can be played directly from the Buzz update.

The quality of comments is much better on Buzz than on blogs or Twitter one-sentence replies - it is probably because people use their real names tied to a Gmail account.

The Buzz updates are fully searchable - Twitter only searches the last 7 days.

Google Buzz copied some features of Friendfeed, Facebook and Twitter. Google is committed to improving it - it's a very important product for them - make or break, in fact, considering the competition from Facebook. Buzz will be an interesting service to work with.

The adoption rate surpassed all expectations but it is still too early to say - a community is what makes a social network successful. Will see what the future brings.



Comments:

Jeffrey Benabio, MD - Insightful comments. I am stumbling through, but fell Buzz allows for higher quality interaction at "cost" of lower volume.

Arin Basu - Good point, Jeffrey. Also, if you may have noted, you cannot get "buzz" as RSS feeds, cannot mark favourite "buzz"es, cannot hashtag them, etc. Seems to me buzz and tweets belong to two different styles & perhaps each can complement the other. For example, write a longer buzz (or identify a nice buzz, note its url, shorten it, post to twitter, and hastag it for later retrieval). Something like that.

Nicholas Genes - I'm with Ves. Twitter and it's 140-char limit were designed with phones circa 2006 in mind. Buzz was designed with modern smartphones in mind. In a few weeks or months when third-party apps and integration catches up, Twitter will seem hopelessly primitive.

Karin Lewicki - Problem is, I'd been using Twitter for news and it seems perfect for that; 140 is a good limit for a headline and a link. The personal talk, meanwhile, if the most constricted was also the least interesting.

If Buzz takes us back from this new news space into more familiar gossip/chat space, I will be chalking it up as a loss.

Twitter vs. Google Buzz for team collaboration in medicine

A few thoughts from my conversation with the Australian ER physician and medical bloggger extraordinaire Mike Cadogan:

Dr Mike Cadogan - Taking advice from @scanman in the short term, and have disconnected Twitter to get a better feel of the Buzz thing. It was interesting to see the initial responses from colleagues about the tweets - but then they just got a bit overwhelmed watching one side fo a conversation and switched off. Instead I am trying to get them to join twitter...will see. Google seem to be highly responsive to change and I am enjoying the fluidity of teh Buzz response team at present

Ves Dimov, M.D. - Twitter is inferior platform to Buzz. Hardly suitable for conversation. Unless the Twitter team changes its structure, it will fade away and be replaced by Buzz and Facebook... I would get your colleagues to join Buzz instead and use the "group broadcasting" feature - it should work great for work collaboration as well.

Dr Mike Cadogan - It does feel nice to be able to add more context in the conversation, I will go that route!

Read more of our extensive coverage of Google Buzz at Web 2.0 and Social Media plus Medicine and CasesBlog.

How to post your Google Buzz updates on Twitter automatically

The 140 characters on Twitter are often not enough for science and medical news. Google Buzz does not have a low-number character limit, hence I am channeling the updates from Buzz to Twitter.

This is how to automatically post your Google Buzz updates on Twitter:

1. Go to your Google profile/Buzz and copy the RSS feed - click the orange icon in the browser address bar.

2. Paste the RSS feed in FeedBurner and "burn" a new feed.

3. Activate the "Socialize" function to Twitter. You must already have a Twitter account that you link to FeedBurner. Click "Publicize" tab at the top and then select "Socialize" from the left sidebar.

5. Choose "Body only" (not "Title") in the "Formatting Options" of the FeedBurner feed.

That's all. All your Google Buzz updates will be now posted on Twitter automatically.

You can find more detailed instructions here:
http://buzzusers.com/showthread.php?62-How-to-Publish-your-Buzz-to-Twitter

Comments:

Arin Basu - Nice suggestions.

I have noted that if you set up to autopost buzz to twitter this way and twitter is connected to buzz in your links area of the google buzz profile, then your buzz as tweets show up in Buzz and then get fed again as tweets (sort of a loop that keeps on going between twitter and buzz). One way to get rid of this is to remove the twitter link from buzz. However, if you then like to bring in your (and favourite ones from other people you follow) tweets into buzz, you cannot do that.

I like to link my twitter and my buzz together. One other thing I do to send my buzzes (and favourite/interesting buzzes) to twitter is to open the comment link, choose the material to email to my posterous (http://www.posterous.com) account. This allows me to send longer pieces as shortened urls to twitter (it maintains a copy on my posterous for occasional review of interesting links for work). I have linked my posterous with twitter, so one post to posterous (public view) allows me to post to twitter as well. However, it is not autopost.

For twitter to buzz is usually by way of retweets that show up in my buzz box.
I think buzz+gmail can be very conveniently used as a central hub of almost all incoming/outflowing communication (RSS, tweets, facebook updates, emails from other people and non-gmail accounts). Buzz with online document storage, & using services like posterous, also saves on bandwidth & data storage, and avoid unnecessary duplication.

Arin Basu - For buzz >> posterous >> twitter connection to work (corrected version),

1) you will need to post to posterous from your gmail account (presumably that has buzz on it).
2) You can just use posterous and simultaneously post to both buzz and twitter if your posterous account is also connected to buzz. To link your posterous account to buzz, do:
a) Add the following to the posterous "bio" section:
Your Name, etc
b) Then add your posterous URL to your google profile and click add
c) Next time when Google spiders your posterous account, hopefully it will add your posterous to your buzz profile and then you are all set
d) check your google buzz profile connected sites and add the posterous site if you want

3) There are a couple of ways to do that:
1) (long way): create a buzz post, then use the comments section to email the buzz post to twitter AT posterous dot com (remember again, your posterous and gmail must be the same)
2) Shorter way (if you have configured your twitter to connect to buzz as well): just send an email to twitter AT posterous dot com; the mail will appear at both buzz and twitter

A point to remember is: using buzz@gmail.com will send only your subject line to buzz.

There are many other ways to channel, pretty much using similar processes. These are quite flexible.

Updated: 02/17/2010

Some health bloggers feel uncomfortable with Google Buzz

@drval: "I'm actually going to stay away from Buzz for a while. I like keeping my email a separate world. Will jump in if it becomes relevant."

ePatientDave: "To me what Buzz means is that Google has permanently shown themselves not qualified to be in health data. Period."

EdBennett: "I'm moving away from all Google apps. it will take time and effort, but this latest gaffe has me worried"

I use Google for most of my online work and I am not planning to change this. However, I do appreciate an alternative point of view.



Comments:

Dean Giustini - Google is throwin' everything at us and I feel buried informationally. I also don't know the point of having Google Wave & Buzz in light of Twitter and all the microblogging aggregators. I never thought it would happen: I've reach info-sat (saturation).

Tim Sturgill - I understand the concern about privacy issue and what occurred with the start of Buzz, but I have some difficulty with the notion that such a wonderful free service (Google products) somehow equates to no personal responsibility. Any privacy "breaches" with the start of Buzz were totally preventable by beforehand looking at and managing your Google profile and reading the instructions that came with the Buzz start. Could Google have done better, sure.

The irony (having had my identity stolen in the hospital I work at and was a patient) -- I'll trust Google with private info, even health info, any day of the week over healthcare entities (without a lot of upfront scrutiny).9:15 pm

Ves Dimov, M.D. - The greatest benefit is that you can actually have a conversation on Buzz, include rich media included and use groups of people to collaborate.

Twitter is an inefficient way of exchanging one-liners. It's probably good for company customer service.

There is a big difference between Buzz and Wave. Buzz is simple micro-blog & network. Google Wave is a powerful collaboration platform in early beta.

Google Wave can replace both Gmail and Google Docs. It is not easy to comprehend for many users though and it is not very intuitive. On the other hand, Google Wave has the functionality but does not have the social network of Buzz and Gmail, hence both services are needed.

The information overload is another topic beyond the scope of this discussion. As I have mentioned, Twitter and Facebook are among the most inefficient ways of information consumption. Google Reader is one of the tools to work with large volumes of info but it is not very "social".

Tim Sturgill - Should have added, any new service (or add on to existing service) should be opt-in not opt-out. So on that score alone I believe Google blew it (but only to the extent you negate any personal responsibility or your persona on the web).

Ves Dimov, M.D. - I agree with you, Tim. Yet, obviously a lot of people feel differently about Google and online privacy in general and their scrutiny is welcome.

Tim Sturgill - Wave goes beyond the web, because of XMPP -- operate independent from the web. A very powerful transport capability is introduced with Wave.