Google Buzz has only been live for five days, but it’s already created controversy, undergone major revamps, and gained millions of users. If this is Google’s attempt to take on Facebook and Twitter, it looks as though Google has succeeded in more ways than it might have hoped—in their first week with a live product, the Buzz team has already experienced many of the same growing pains felt by its rivals.

Thankfully, Google’s Buzz Team has been quick to address some of the privacy concerns expressed by users.  The biggest privacy issue with Buzz has centered around follow lists.  Upon sign-up, users automatically became followers of their most frequent Gmail contacts and those contacts became part of a public list so that others could see who you were following.  For Gmail users who never had any expectation that their contacts would ever become public, this was troubling to say the least.  For some users, the shared lists were embarrassing or even compromising to their careers or safety.

Countless stories have already been published about Gmail users being horrified that their ex-girlfriend, psychiatrist, or the HR rep from a rival company were suddenly made part of a public list.  One blogger expressed her horror in finding that her boyfriend’s name had been made public so that everyone, including her  serially violent ex-husband, knew the identify of the new man her life.

Fortunately, users can turn off this feature fairly easily—check out the tip below—and Google has announced that it has replaced the auto-follow feature with an auto-suggest feature and it has made opting-out of publicly sharing your contact list a much more prominent part of the sign-up process.

Google also announced in the same blog post that it will also be creating a Google Buzz setting tab within Gmail, something I had suggested upon first using the products as its unclear how to change many of Buzz’s settings after the initial sign-up process is completed.

Google should consider adding Connected Sites to this box as it would then be a comprehensive collection of Buzz settings.

Tips

1. Turn Off Contact Sharing

You don’t have to let the privacy kerfuffle dissuade you from using Buzz, you just need to be aware of how to control what information Buzz displays.  You can easily disable contact sharing by visiting your Google Profile page:

2. Edit Your Connected Sites

I found this menu a bit illusive, so here’s a quick highlight:

3. Email Buzz

If you want to post something to Buzz from your phone or another locale where you don’t have access to full-fledged Gmail, just email your post to buzz@gmail.com.

4. Subscribe via RSS

Every buzzer has an RSS feed, so if you want to follow people via RSS or display your Buzz feed—or anyone’s feed—on your website or blog, it’s just like using any other RSS feed.  However, there aren’t any RSS icons to be found within buzz, or even on profile pages, but your browser’s RSS detection should pick up on the Buzz feed on a Google Profile page:

For more on how to use Google Buzz, check out the Gmail help page on Buzz.

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