Glad I Don't Use Gmail

Well I do have a gmail account but I have not gotten in the habit of using it.  I experiment with as many Google products as I can because I am a big fan of innovation and I am always thrilled when I find evidence of it.

Fred Wilson had a great post today on the virtues of Explicit vs Implicit communicating and specifically what happens when you combine email with a social network -- like Google did this week with Buzz.

Real people all have multiple social circles that overlap and interact in extremely complex ways. So far no one has figured out an elegant way to model the complexity of real relationships -- and I suspect it will be a long time before such a thing comes about. A social media system fails when the makers think it actually replicates real life. So the bigger and more self assured makers of systems get, Google would be the biggest and most self assured, the less likely they will be to create a system of value.

Now all the buzz is about how Buzz is sharing too much information with too many people with too little approval or awareness by the person sharing.  I have to say I am pretty glad I am not one of the unwitting sharers.