5 tips for using Google Buzz on your phone

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 | 2:32 PM

A few weeks ago we released Google Buzz for mobile. There are many ways to access Google Buzz from your phone, but the web app (buzz.google.com) provides the most complete viewing and posting experience on an iPhone or Android 2.0+ device (more platforms are coming soon). Today, we'd like to share some tips on how to get the most out of the Google Buzz web app on your phone.

1. Search for a place to post from
Tagging a post with your location is easy and fun. You can just tap the location box in the posting screen to add a place name or an address. Or, you can search for a place. Click ">" in the location box and scroll down a bit to find the search box. This will allow you to search for places nearby and tag your post with that location.

2. Learn more about a tagged place
When you see a location tag and the little red pin attached to someone's post, you might want to learn more about that place. Click 'Show map' to see the address of that place and a small map, which you can tap to see a bigger, fully functional map. You can also click the place link to view business details, reviews, photos, and more.

3. Choose to share privately or publicly
The Google Buzz web app provides options to share your post publicly on the web or privately with the groups you select. To create a new group to share privately, you'll need to visit Buzz in Gmail or google.com/contacts from your computer. Your location is attached to your post by default, either as an address or a place. If you don't want it attached, you can simply tap the 'Remove location' link. Next time you post, we will remember your choices for the sharing option (public or private) and for the location tagging option (whether or not to include location).

4. View mobile profiles and follow new people
You'll often find interesting public posts or comments made by people you're not following yet. If you'd like to start following them, simply tap on their name to visit their mobile profile page, click the 'Buzz' tab, and tap 'Follow'. The 'Contact Info' tab includes info pulled from their public Google profile that they've chosen to share and any additional info you may have about them in your contacts, making it easy for you to contact them with one click.

5. Auto-finish @reply
When you want to include someone in a post or comment, you can use the @reply feature. On mobile devices, simply type "@user", which will be automatically expanded to "@user@gmail.com" for you. This will save you time typing on the phone.

Stay tuned for more tips, and visit our Help Center to learn more. We also love to hear your feedback in our forum and your suggestions on the Mobile Product Ideas page!


13 comments:

leshiener65 said...

i love this app!!!well, when i figured out how to use it thx to this step by step helper!!I now can post,comment, and blog anywhere I am in the world thx to this genius app on the iphone!THANKS GOOGLE!!!!


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Unknown said...

4. View mobile profiles and follow new people
You'll often find interesting public posts or comments made by people you're not following yet. If you'd like to start following them, simply tap on their name to visit their mobile profile page, click the 'Buzz' tab, and tap 'Follow'.

HOW DO I FIND PUBLIC POSTS? My Google Buzz consists of my 1 follower. How do I find other people and how do I see public posts? Is there a public stream someplace?

Thomas Bentzen said...

This is very cool, the only thing missing to make it down right awsome is the ability to upload a picture from the mobile app.

Peter du Toit said...

Any idea when we can expect the app on Blackberry and Windows Mobile? (I know we can already use Mobile Maps on WInMo)

JayMonster said...

Auto complete and @user is poorly implemented. I don't want to expose my E-mail address to the world. It should just tie into my buzz name or nickname, not give spammers another way to cull my E-MAIL!!!

gregianos said...

As Peter said, when is it coming on WM? Will be going back to FB and twitter shortly as the pull of buzz is growing thin as its only available to me on my PC, whilst i can easily view the others on my mobile.

Shroomy said...

I'm really hoping for a full-fledged S60 device app in the near future. Yeah, the maps module is neat, but it'd be a lot more useful if I could actually read buzzes and comments and reply.

Brandon Marback said...

Still missing the geotagged photos from Non-Android devices.

Drew said...

I'd love to talk to the devs and figure out why they have such a fragmented UI design. The Gmail Buzz client, the mobile web ap, and the Google Maps client all seem to have different philosophies behind them, which is deeply confusing for users, especially since each client lacks important features that another has, forcing us to constantly switch between them all.

Maps buzz layer is right now the best client. It natively exposes the best part of Buzz: a very intuitive geotagging UI that allows people to annotate the world with text and, best of all, pictures. But for some reason, it lacks 1) user settings 2) a like option 3) a "reshare/retweet" option and 4) a video option and 5) an ability to delete or edit a Buzz. It also doesn't allow you to set the date-range of buzzes, or only see buzzes from people you follow, etc. But it's still great, simple, powerful, for all that.

The gmail Buzz client bizarrely lacks any option to select posting location. With many people having laptops, this is silly.

The mobile web client lacks photo uploads, and is in general too slow and clunky. It also doesn't handle the maps aspect nearly as well as the native Google Maps layer.

For privacy concerns, I also really think that google needs to have user settings on all geotagged posting options whereby a user can select the effective accuracy of their location data. Android Maps already does this with GPS: they use a blue circle to show where the probable location is whenever an exact lock isn't available. The exact same display can be used on Buzz locations to show that I'm posting from within a few miles radius, without giving away exactly where (and not necessarily putting the origin of the circle exactly where I actually am).

Again, allow people to control their information.

And get that Google Maps native Buzz layer out to iPhones PRONTO! It's great!

Drew said...

I should also say that the mobile ap on my Droid at this point is crippled by the fact that half of the time it's constantly cycling it's little ajax loader animation without loading anything... and this goes on for long stretches of time, even hours. Even when I have a great connection (or even wireless) where everything else works great.

That makes a lot of these tips sort of moot. The Maps ap is great, just still lacking in key usability features.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your tips. I will buy Android fone soon.

Soulstitch said...

It is absolutely disappointing at Blackberry being left out with no explanation. Like chrome browser not being able to use google's own toolbar Google seems to keep making big mistakes.

wakasavan said...

Amazing