Buzzie: A Review of the iPhone’s First Google Buzz App

March 4, 2010 - By Justin E. Gehrke

March 4, 2010 – Yesterday, Apple’s App Store made available Buzzie, the first iPhone App for user’s of Google Buzz. Launched in February, Google’s latest social media tool targets users of the Facebook and Twitter platforms, with the hope that users will migrate to a platform that integrates webmail, web-based applications, and other Google services. Though the verdict is still out on Buzz, iPhone users, who are also Buzz users, now have a native way to do it.

(Screenshots and review included below.)

At first glance, the interface is much like that of the mobile version delivered by Google, through the iPhone’s Safari browser. One of the key things the mobile web version lacks is the ability to mute conversations. For me, this is one of the features I had hoped for in any iPhone app version of the service.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be included in Buzzie either. There really aren’t too many other differences between the app functionality and the web-based version. This isn’t to say there are not advantages to using Buzzie, though. Like any good review, Below are the pros and cons, as we see them.

Pros:

1. Caches logon credentials and supports location based features
2. Frees you from annoying Safari-based Buzzing
3. Stable and free of annoying bugs (No premature closure up to this point)
4. Clean, intuitive interface

Cons:

1. Doesn’t support conversation muting
2. Annoyingly reminds you if you haven’t approved location services
3. No additional functionality to separate it from the mobile web version

In the end, is it worth the $1.99 price tag? It is if you are a regular Buzz user, who regularly clears their Safari cache. If that’s you, with the Buzzie App, at least you don’t have to login every time you want to use the service. Hopefully, future versions of Buzzie, as well as other Buzz applications, will only expand in both form and function.

You can check out the application, for yourself, here.