By now I’ve had the time to really mess with Google Buzz quite a bit. I have it importing most of my feeds, and I have made the occasional post to it. I have to say, I like the idea. Buzz is one part status updating (like Twitter or Facebook) and then it adds a location element underneath. As you post from places you can tie the post to a location, bring in some context on your note (at least on occasion).

Here’s the problem. Twitter and Facebook have the status game nailed down. Everyone is using those two services already. The other side of this is that Foursquare is pretty much the goto site for location based “check-ins” with Gowalla not too far behind (at least in user counts). So we have two services in each of the categories that Buzz is looking to service. Basically they’re late to the game and so adoption is going to be slow and painful, and there’s a good chance that Google Buzz will never get too high off the ground as a result.

The nice thing about Google Buzz is that is that it gives me the ability to only go to one place to post both location and status. Sure I can use the FourSquare or Gowalla apps, but if I want to get the most out of both services, I have to check in using both services. If I want to ensure everyone gets my status update I have to ensure it posts to both Twitter and Facebook, which requires some extra work. Buzz gives us that “1 stop shop” for both kinds of services.

Some people are using Buzz in interesting ways, Tim O’Reilly is using it to “host” conversations on ideas originally posted to Twitter. So he’s using as an extension on Twitter. I’m curious as to how Buzz is going play out in the long term. While I don’t think it will kill Twitter, I’m curious to see if it could make a nice play in the location space. Only time is going to tell though and since Google Buzz is still young I think we’ll see plenty come out of it over time.