With their shiny new social network toy strangely reminiscent of Twitter, Google introduces Buzz, which by connecting to your Gmail account and adding new features supposedly makes life easier for social creatures who likes to chat and share information about themselves. Question is, do you need to catch the Google Buzz?

The first thing I noticed when going online this morning while waiting for my coffee was a lady with the name Harriet, aggravated by how Google Buzz auto-shares her Reader account with her most frequent contacts, including an abusive ex-husband and a boyfriend. If you can no longer reach that particular post by the time you read this, try the Gizmodo link. Never mind the Gizmodo comments.

People e-mailing her anonymous blog account are added on her frequent contacts list, as the e-mails are forwarded to her personal mail account. In the name of being social and sharing everything, Buzz adds anyone sending an e-mail through her blog to a list giving them access to personal information she would otherwise not share with the whole world. Simply disconnecting from Buzz doesn’t help that much:

Oh, yes, I suppose I could opt out of Buzz — which I did when it was introduced, though that apparently has no effect on whether or not I am now using Buzz — but as soon as I did that, all sorts of new people were following me on my Reader! People I couldn’t block, because I am not on Buzz!

Harriet’s outburst comes after several years with mounting frustration caused by the way personal information is spilled all over the web by free Google services, with Buzz being the proverbial last drop. The Google Buzz team receives numerous complaints from frustrated users having strangers digging around in their personal information and Reader account. Though it ought to be said that, what probably got to her most was the rather user-unfriendly way to effectively disabling Buzz.

Some of Google Buzz’s features:

• Auto-adds your most frequent e-mail and chat contacts
• Simplifies media sharing (I’ll refrain from commenting on this)
• Offers two sharing modes, private and public
• Integrated with the users Gmail Inbox
• Google Maps currently supported for Android, Symbian & Windows Mobile
• Geo-tag posts to let others know exactly from where you submitted
• “Phone in the Buzz” on smart phones with speech recognization software

For an overview and further explanation on the various features that comes with Buzz, watch the video below from the Google Buzz Launch Event on Feb. 10, 2010:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuThg91-4Nw

Some other links worth a visit:

• Google Buzz-Privacy Nightmare
• Google Buzz Still has Major Privacy Flaws
• Last but not least: Buzz Off-Disabling Google Buzz
• The official Google Blog