I haven't been a GMail user for very long. I think it was only this year when I actually opened a GMail account and actively used it as my primary email. Had it not been for the fact that my Yahoo! Mail requires me to pay in order to redirect messages there to my GMail account, I wouldn't've probably checked the Yahoo! one anymore.
Anyway, it was not really a big problem, but I recently found one irk with my GMail account when I found out that I was automatically subscribed to Google's own social networking application called Google Buzz, which was actually a cross between Twitter and Plurk's respective UIs. I wasn't the only one who was victimized by this incident. A lot of unsuspecting users fell prey to this application, but most of them just shrugged it off.
But not everyone is impressed. A lot of users actually complained about their information security when they realized that Google Buzz's auto-follow feature forced them to "follow" people whom they email and chat with. The converse is also true, because the same people whom they "follow" do the opposite as well. So, unknowingly, a number of GMail users are actually giving some level of information.
Google was quick to remedy the situation. Last Monday, the Mountain View-based company asked users to confirm or to edit its previously assumed settings. Confirming it then retains the status quo, while they also have the option to unfollow previously followed email contacts and vice versa. Google said that it was quick to correct the errors that it had committed when it learned that it didn't get everything right with Buzz the first time around.
Well, personally, I suggest to crap Google Buzz altogether. If people need others to satiate their ego with followers, then Twitter is the only way to go. There are many users of that site, from which one can sort of get the followers. The rest of us don't need them.
