UPDATE, March 2, 2010: After experimenting with a plugin for Google Buzz, I have decided not to use on at this time. All available plugins as of now offer to ad comments to Google Reader items- this potentially can scatter the discussion all over places. Hopefully a better solution will be implemented soon.

With the arrival of Google Buzz, I began to question whether or not I should continue to concentrate on Twitter. I hope I am not the only one. Two days ago Twitter decided to intruduce even more “nofollow” attributes this time to their internal linking structure. I understood (but did not agree) when they introduced the first round of nofollow attributes to their links, I guess as young startup you needed to do what you needed to do.

So today I have replaced the Tweetmeme button (courtesy of Tweetmeme ) with new and shiny Google Buzz button (courtesy of Hameedullah Khan). The Tweetmeme button was moved to the button of each post. This is just a symbolic gesture of my personal dissatisfaction of the way Twitter is “innovating”, I have nothing but love for Tweetmeme.

Twitter has bigger issues to deal with….

For Twitter trying to manipulating the flow of the Google juice at this stage of the game is really childish, and if that is the reason for the latest change I just feel sorry for Twitter. Really guys, is this the best you’ve got? Now if the recent change was made as a further attempt to eliminate spam my question is the same, is this the best you’ve got? There are ways to eliminate spam without punishing your users.

There is also another factor, and I maybe completely wrong about it… I appears to me that many of my online are starving for a more meaningful way to keep the conversation going (which in my opinion is impossible to have on Twitter). So if you compare Twitter and Google Buzz from that perspective, Google Buzz wins hands down, and if you thought Google Buzz is no threat to Twitter you should really think again.

Now back to the new and shiny Google Buzz button- you need to use your GMail/Google Reader to interact with it. You can also follow Go Beyond MLS on Google.

Within minutes of publishing last post I had a visitor- a very pissed off visitor. Who managed to spew his venom on Bill Hartzer‘s blog as well (Bill my apologies for the “nofollow” attribute, I do trust your website- I hate to give LeapFish any juice):

While I can speculate who this “Anonymous” may have been- the only certain fact I know is that he came to read the post via Twitter after an entry was posted in my account that announcing that I have written the post.

There is no point to communicate with anonymous trolls like that. Most of the time they have no interest to hear what you have to say. They can’t contain their anger and spew their venom using bogus names along with bogus e-mails. I find it difficult to describe what do I feel about trolls like that- fortunately there are people out there who have their way with words (HT: Lord Matt) and I can’t agree more!

As sad as it is their behavior cast more shadow of suspicion and does more damage to themselves and the interests they try to defend and the companies they work for. Sad really but from now on……..

NO TROLLS ALLOWED!

Twitter users may find Twitter Tools very useful. It eliminates the need of services like TwitterFeed, and offers array of other feature that will help you to synchronize your Twitter activity with your blog(s).

Once installed you can configure the plugin to do following:

1. Create a tweet when you publish a new post. For me this eliminated the need for TwitterFeed, and is probably the only option I will use for now.
2. Create a blog post from each of your tweets.
3. Create a daily digest blog post from your tweets
4. Create a weekly digest blog post from your tweets

In addition it has a widget you can use on the sidebar of your blog which you can use to create new tweets.

If everything goes well and I have configured this plugin properly, it should notify Twitter about this post. If you are using Twitter Tools already, let me know what is your impression about this plugin in the comments below.