Google launched Buzz last week to generally better press than Apple received seems to have received for it’s iPad, though I wonder if there are some similarities. For one thing, both of these are kind of re-imagines of already successful products. The iPad is basically the iPhone on a grander scale; if you watch Apple’s videos it’s clear they are thinking, “This is what we did with the iPhone- but what if we had a bigger screen?” Google’s Buzz of course is kind of reminiscent of Google Wave which was promoted famously as “What if we where inventing email today?” Buzz might well be asking “What if we invented Twitter today?”

There’s plenty of ways that kind of thinking can go right or wrong, but I’m wondering if what made Twitter what it is today was that it was kind of retro to begin with- and that’s what makes it fun. I’ve tried to explain Twitter to people for about 2 years now. The 140-character limit is kind of arbitrary- text messages can be up to 160 characters and computers-type limits would be multiples of 8, resulting in numbers like 128 or 256 characters.  So yes, it’s a bit of a toy, but it’s limitations are what make it a challenge, you can’t be sloppy with Twitter, it takes a bit of thinking to pack much meaning into 140 characters –spaces and punctuation included– and that in turn that appeals to certain people.

Google Buzz does away with that limit of course.  While  Buzz of course has no limits on text, it lets you add photos, links, probably video too. It’s certainly probably more practical, but it might not turn out to be as much fun.