But it sure is addictive. I was skeptical at first, but within moments ended up embroiled in this:

And that is just a single Buzz. So… yeah.

I’m surprised at how quickly everyone seemed to jump on the Buzz bandwagon. Normally, at least amongst the folks I know, there’s a period of skepticism that follows the announcement of a new technology or service. Then the few technology junkies will bravely step forward to try it out, and if it’s good, they’ll hook everybody else in. This did not happen with Buzz. Everyone jumped on Buzz at the same time. All day I was pummeled with posts from people far and wide, not all tech junkies either. Most were friends that I haven’t spoken to in a long long time. Suddenly we were chatting like we just saw each other yesterday. It was fantastic. Facebook has never even come close to bringing me in touch with so many friends in such a short time.

So that’s the good side of Buzz. The bad side is… well, all day it was like this constant, incessant, um, buzz in the background, sabotaging my every attempt to be productive. I filtered out Buzz announcements in my Inbox. I turned off new Buzz notifications. It was no use. I felt drawn to it like a… bee to honey. That was awful. Oh yeah, and the pun-tastic simile was pretty bad too.

All day people were making comparisons between Buzz and Twitter, Facebook, email, forums, Google Talk, and of course Wave. This kind of comparison tends to happen whenever a novel alternative to preexisting, ingrained habits (and yes it is a habit) shows up. People try to weigh the pros and cons of the new product in an effort to consider whether to adopt, ditch, switch, sandwich, or something else that rhymes. I think one of the implications of this is that we are slowly feeling a bit collectively overwhelmed. Everyone has to admit, sooner or later, that we only have so much time on our hands in a day, and there is indeed a glut of services out there to choose from. We can’t possibly use them all, even though we want all their proffered benefits.

I admire Google for its ability to create insta-community in a matter of minutes on a preexisting platform. It’s ingenious! But I still can’t help but be a little bit uneasy about this trend towards More. Just this morning I had a bit of existential angst as I wondered whether to switch to Picasa from Flickr. And then I went to work, saw the little colored speech bubble icon, and knew it was all over.

But this cannot be helped; the Internet is the most capitalistic of all societies (and W3C be darned) and in capitalism, competitive semi-redundancy reigns supreme. If we want the webs to serve us, then we in turn must serve it by being the guinea pigs of its various experiments. In the long run, it’s going to suck up more of our time, not just time spent actively using the internets, but time spent deciding “how” or “where” or “what part” to use.

Maybe this is a growing pain we that as consumers have to get used to, until growth tapers. Or it will never taper (ok I admit that last thought was very wishful). If it doesn’t then eventually, like any society born of excess, the Internet will begin to spawn entire, extremely lucrative industries geared towards managing all that excess. In the physical world, we have dieting specialists, home organization consultants, and entire stores where you can buy things to put your other things in. What if we had Internetters Anonymous, and hired personal specialists who will suggest, manage, and streamline all your Web 2.0 services for you? Actually, there’s a start-up idea for you.

As I wrote this the buzz that I screenshotted below just got longer. That’s it, Ineternets. I give up, You win.

For now.