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Date de publication : 14 juin 2011 15:15:36
@replies are a powerful feature of Buzz. It is a true way to “poke” another user by sending the Buzz post straight to an inbox.
But before to get to the point, we need to proceed through some explanation about Buzz users’ email address.
A/ The normal way to contact an unknown Buzz user
If you would like to have a personal exchange with Buzz users you don’t know, the first thing to do is to right-click on their names and open their profile page in a new tab. There, under the main picture, one may find the “Send an email” link. This way you can send an email to that user, even if you don’t know his/her address, and doing so, you reveal your own address to this user. Then he/she can decide to answer to you (or not), revealing on his/her turn his/her address (or not). This way, the contact is done, and on each side, users can add the other in their contact lists.
B/ How to guess users’ email from their profile url and how to set your own privacy settings
Here is the quickest way to get a Buzz user’s email address: from the profile page’s url (the address of the page shown in the address bar). If the url looks like that “profiles.google.com/goingbuzz1”, you know you can email to goingbuzz1@gmail.com . But if the url looks like this “profiles.google.com/110891309335478397033”, no one can tell the user’s email address. (see http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=144414 for details).
You can set those two features directly when you’re logged to your profile page, just hit “Edit profile”. Email from the profile is under the picture and url setting is at the bottom of the page.
Note: Until you have thousands of Buzz contacts (followed or following), we recommend that you keep tracks of all your Buzz contacts in a Gmail contact group, which you could call “Buzz” (for example). Doing so is easy for the users you follow as they have a contact card created when you hit the “follow” button. So when you’ve just followed some one, you can find him/her right away in your contacts and add any additional information or group belonging. Tracking your followers is much more tricky, as you have to take action each time you get a new one. When it happens, you can right-click his/her name to open his/her profile in a new tab where you can get information to put in the contact card in that specific group (name, profile url, email address and picture). But, as we don’t get any notification when someone un-follows us, that list may not be accurate after some time, and so you may want to create two groups: one for followed, one for followers. (Trick: you can view the list of people you follow getting to this url: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&shva=1#contacts/group/12/Buzz , but only use this list to add people to another “personal” list).
Within those groups, you can set sub-groups or cross-groups (“TopBuzzers”, “ChatBuddies” or whatever) to practice “private buzzing”.
C/ The normal way to @reply
Now, we will see why it is important to collect Buzz users contact information and especially the email address. Google’s official help about @replies doesn’t go far:
@replies: Write @ in front of someone's username as a way of directing your buzz at that person (it will automatically go to their inbox). You can only use @replies with people who are in your contacts, and other followers won't be able to see the Gmail username.
See: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=171454 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LS7MsuHLMI
So, to be clear, here are the two “official” ways to @reply, in the post body or in a comment:
1- Enter manually the symbol “@”, immediately followed by the user’s Gmail full address.
2- When you’ve entered a “@”, you can start to enter one of your contacts’ name’s beginning (the real name as stored in your contact list). As soon as you start typing, a drop-down box appears and its content updates as you type, proposing you to choose the right one among your contacts. And when you click on the chosen one his/her Gmail address is inserted.
Conclusion: you can only @reply this way to people that are listed in your contacts. But if you have your preferred Buzzers listed, @replies become super easy.
D/ Tools to help you @reply
If you feel that all this above is too complicated or binding, there are two Chrome extensions to help you:
1- Replies for Buzz (chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nejepecnjckgpaonipnbkmochnhhgkbg) It adds an extra “Reply” link for each comment and a "Reply to Author" for each Buzz.
Pros: A click saver.
2- BuzzerList (chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cgjcoaelchebgmoapjckomnbmoljbalb) It lists all Buzz users active on the current page and provides multiples tools to mass @reply.
Pros: Many options in a nice, easy & discrete tool.
Conclusion:
@reply is a key feature of Google Buzz and its use could be enhanced. Meanwhile, here are the three use cases when @reply should be used:
- To alert a friend of a Buzz post he/she may not follow because you know the interest of this person for the subject.
- To ask a direct question to someone, that shall be relevant … and polite.
- To answer to a specific person, especially when there are a lot of comments.
Spamming, harassment or any bad uses will NOT be tolerated! (c.f. Best practices )
Last note: If anyone @replies someone in a private post, that someone has automatically access to that thread as if he/she was invited by the author of the post.
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