There are several issues that people have uncovered in the last 2 days that it has existed. For me, of all the features that Buzz lacks, one thing really stands out. There is no way to just see a list of the conversations (without the whole list of comments expanded by default). This is the main reason that I *had* to unfollow Scoble, Michael Arrington, Louis Gray and a bunch of others. Take a look at this conversation, and you would understand why.
Every time, anyone, replied to that thread (which incidently has been at the top of scoble’s buzz list all day), it would become the top post on my buzz view as well. Now you are thinking, “Well, Buzz was not meant for long conversations”. Go back and read the comments on that conversation .. all 350+ of them, and come back here.
Note to Google Buzz Developers: Now that truly sucks, and is such a trivial use-case that I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets fixed in a day or two … it better if you want Scoble to continue to use it (and we all know how vital that is for any social network’s success).
So here’s my humble request: PLEASE LET ME MINIMIZE HUGE-ASS THREADS
Google has already done this with Google Reader, where you can just see a list of items, or see them expanded. I don’t see any reason why this wasn’t the case, out of the box, for Buzz. In end, the only conclusion that I can think of is that, this pre-pre-alpha from a user experience perspective, and somehow all the design gurus (the ones who kept the Google page clean all these years), have disappeared into the user.
Google Buzz is by far, the clumsiest google product, with almost zero forethought to how users, will use it. It’s almost as if, none of the enigneers/designers on the Buzz have ever used twitter or facebook or friendfeed. Somehow I find that hard to believe. I’m hoping they’ll fix some, if not all the usability issues very soon.
Iterate guys! Iterate! Fast and hard.