We are all aware that Geolocation is becoming big business for many mainstream businesses. If you cannot be found on Facebook Places, Foursquare or Gowalla you are behind the times. I understand Twitter is playing with the idea of utilizing their geolocation tags for business purposes. These services offer local businesses huge potential revenue streams, and the ability to offer locational discounts, vouchers and promotions by physically checking in at specific locations.

But what if you have a local business, servicing a specific location but you don’t have a physical location that clients or customers can check in at? Before you can claim a location on any of the above services, you have to specify a location, and you have to be able verify that you own that location. If you don’t have a store or an outlet people can visit, how can you utilize these services?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. However, I am wondering whether there is an opportunity here to develop a new platform, or enhance the existing services that allows non-physical local businesses,  to participate in the geolocation buzz.

How can you be lonely when you have so many friends on Facebook?

Are you cursed by the social network generation of only having relationships with people you hardly know, or work colleagues that you would rather not know in person, let alone online?

Has time move on from days when groups of friends got together in person for a night out or weekend activity?

Do you feel pressured into having to join popular social networking site because your friends are there, or you need to feel part of a community because online is the only community available to you?

All these questions are faced by many lonely people, who’s only access to people or a community is only available via a social networking website. Users of social networking websites know that you do not have to publish information about yourself, or post minute by minute status updates, but are you excluded or even black-marked by people when you do not join the ‘community’?

In my opinion social networking websites are not the place for a lonely person, because it can quantify your isolation from the outside world and people in person. The news feeds or status updates are constantly updated with streams of peoples activity, opinions, and photographs. It is a continued reminder of how other people are living their lives in text and technicolor and who’s popular and who’s not. Photographs are probably the most heartfelt reminder of when you see people tagged in a photograph and you were not included.

The pressures of young people to join social networking websites is well documented. Bullying has moved from the playground to social networking websites, and is know as cyber-bullying. There has been many reported cases in the media of people being harassed which has driven a few to suicide attempts and self-harming due to the psychological damage people do to one another. Do not get me wrong, bullying is not anything new, and not limited to social networking websites by any stretch of the imagination. My point is, as with many things, and especially for young people, there are social pressures for people to join these networks whether they want to or not.

This is not just a teenager or young person problem. The Mental Health Foundation released a report that a staggering 53% of 18-34 year olds had felt depressed due to loneliness. The report did answer one fundamental question: nearly a third of young people stated they spend too much time communicating online and not enough time in person.

I’ve been using Google Buzz for a couple of days. It would appear the UK didn’t get access until a couple of days after the American’s did. This isn’t surprising as Google is an American company and their headquarters is located in the United States.

To date, a couple of my friends and family have followed my on Buzz and I’ve followed them back. Also, several other people have followed me who I do not know and I think this is as a result of others I’ve followed, or comments I’ve made on Buzzes (not sure if the is the PC term) that I found through searching.  The immediate issue that struck me if you want to use Buzz as a means to communicate with friends, family or colleagues, every one needs to have a Google account. Needless to say some do and others don’t. I have attempted to convert a number of people to Gmail; however, to some people email is email regardless of what the logo is in the corner.

There are number of improvements I would love to see already, and it does appear Google have been quick to address on major concern of privacy. The issue of followers seeing who your Gmail contacts are is a concern for everyone and Google have addressed this and made it easier for the end user to find and amend this setting.

Like most social networking platforms there is usually a lot of noise and within that noise somewhere is the interesting information that you want to read and reply too. I find it irritating the there is no easy and quick means to delete or in Google Buzz language ‘mute’ posts that you don’t want to see. What I would like to see is a filter, where you can filter in or filter out tags or keywords that are relevant to your interest. Plus a big delete button or X that is easy to hit if you don’t want to see that post again.

I was hoping there would be more drag and drop functionality. Having to type or pasting links to other web pages, images or video is a pain. I want to be able to drop it into my post.

As there are so many social networking platforms available today, Buzz would have the edge if it became the one-stop-shop for all your social networking activity embedded in your email. I personally only use Twitter and FaceBook and what a wonderful place Buzz would become if I can read and post directly to any social networking site from Buzz.

As usual from Google, this a real sterling effort, and I hope that it’s developed into something that no one can do without. At the moment I do have an open mind, and wait with anticipation of how this will develop.