After a day of Google Buzz, you’re probably starting to form your own opinions.

Many have called it a Twitter killer. Others claim that it is making a play on Facebook. Calacanis stated that Facebook’s valuation dropped in half yesterday.

Personally, I absolutely love it. Here’s why…

It is integrated with GMail. I’m in Gmail all day anyway, so having easy access to it is perfect for me. I realize that this isn’t true for many, and for them there will probably be desktop clients that integrate with Buzz. There is already an API. I predict that Seesmic will be first to market with this integration.

Conversations. If you’ve been using Buzz for the past day and don’t immediately see that the one thing that Twitter has sorely missed is conversations, then there is no hope for you. Go back to Eudora. The conversations that I’ve been involved in are fantastic. Buzz has got me in touch with people who I haven’t conversed with in months. It’s also got me talking to people who I have never even met before, friends of friends.

FriendFeed did most of this, but adoption was poor. FriendFeed does most things better actually, that I hope Google will incorporate somehow.

That’s it. It really isn’t anything more than that.

Danger!

There are a few risks to Buzz. First, it exposes your Google profile and Gmail account. This was already out there if you created a pretty URL for your profile.

Mine is http://google.com/profiles/sjangro

If you want one that doesn’t look like your car’s VIN, edit your profile and way down the bottom, you can select the pretty version:

Also, unless you explicitly set up a private Buzz, what you write is entirely public information. They are visible on your profile, and every Buzz has a “permalink” and Google is indexing buzzes.

This is no different from Twitter, but I think that it is much more obvious on Twitter that what you’re saying is visible to the world. Since Buzz is much more intimate, you may fall into a false sense of security that you’re only talking to your friends.

If you’re not on Buzz yet, do check it out. It’s a game changer.

A friend of mine whom I saw this past September at a “mastermind” type group meeting made an insightful observation about me.

He said, “Scott, I don’t feel like you’re passionate about anything you’re working on.”

I protested, “But I’m passionate about my business…” He cut me off.

“No, those are things that are important to you, but I mean what are you really passionate about?”

He got me to thinking and you know what? He was right. I wanted to say that I love web development and affiliate marketing, and running our publishing business. But those aren’t passions. I’m certainly not passionate about women’s shoes, or halloween costumes, or any of the other topics that make us money.

We hear it all the time. I say it all the time.

“If you want to be successful, create a website or blog around a passion.”

But I don’t do that.

My God, what am I passionate about? I don’t know!

I love skiing and golfing. I’m really good at the former and really bad at the latter. But I don’t want to become an expert in either enough to make it a project that I try to become an online expert in and create a blog. I’m certainly any sort of authority in either.

I love coffee, and I tried that in the form of a podcast but that cooled off. (My fault. Sorry Todd.)

I love web development, technology, gadgets, and the promise of the Internet in changing our lives. But that’s just too broad. Anyway, I tried that too and it failed as well.

Then there’s photography. I’ve got an artistic side, and I love taking pictures. But likewise, photography is a technical skill that I’m just not any sort of authority on. And it takes years of study to get there.

WTF!

Is having a passion really that rare? Is it possible that I don’t actually have one?

But as I was snapping photos on my iPhone the other day, I realized that there’s something amazing happening there. I’m using a camera that’s also a computer with an operating system. There’s a whole army of people developing apps for my camera to make it easy for me to improve my pictures and then share them immediately with the world.

What an awesome thing. And I do it every day without even realizing it.

I’m always, even subconsciously, looking for that perfect shot to capture on my iPhone, thinking about how I can grab it in my little pocket camera and tweak it with the software in there.

There’s nothing more satisfying to me than grabbing the perfect shot of my kids, a stranger, a branch on a tree, a cookie…

…and having the vision to apply the right post-processing to turn a plain cameraphone picture into something that might even be considered artistic.

I think maybe this is a passion that I didn’t even realize I had.

Phonetography

So over this Christmas break, I set up Phonetography.com.

It is a blog about taking special photographs with a mediocre camera, making them great with fun software, and sharing them with the world. All in an instant.

If you’ve got a camera phone and like to use it, then Phonetography is for you. I hope you’ll join me there, subscribe to the feed and newsletter, and participate in the discussion.

Or just follow along as an Internet marketer and entrepreneur starts a new website from scratch.

Do you have a passion? I mean really have a passion? If you’re lucky enough to answer yes, are you doing something with it?

Like most people, I’ve been wishing for lists for as long as twitter has been around.

And now that the feature is available, I love it.

But what I didn’t think about is the impact that public lists would have on Twitter.

The problem with lists:

1. As soon as a list is created, it is out of date.
2. Lists are exclusive. There will always be people left out.

These things became obvious to me as I started to create my own public list called Affiliorati. The idea was not to make a list of everybody in affiliate marketing (there are several of those), but to make a list of those who write or talk about the affiliate marketing industry itself, either on twitter, blogs, podcasts, conferences panels, etc.

I realize that it probably sounds elitist, but that’s not my intention. I like to pay attention to the people who think about the industry itself and through words and action have a direct impact on it.

As I started building that list I realized that I cannot possibly create the perfect list that includes everyone it should. With all my best efforts it is a certainty that people will be left off.

Last week, while I was building this list and examining many affiliate lists, I noticed that I was on some of them and not on others. Tongue firmly in cheek, I posted the following.

This resulted in some funny replies, mostly people who came to my defense, and one who told me to get a life. ( there was no @jangro, but I’m guessing that was at least partially directed at me.)

I do expect that there are probably some real hurt feelings over list exclusions out there.

Not that my Affiliorati list is all that and a bag of chips, but if you feel like I left someone off, please let me know.

Curated Lists

I’ve been seeing the word “curator” a lot in the past week as people get excited about lists, which is an interesting term used mostly in regards to art or museum collections. If you’ve got people following a list that you’re in charge of, they’re putting some faith in you that you’ll provide the care and feeding.

List Quality

How do we know that a list is good? I know first-hand that my own “curated list” is only the result of my efforts to find good twitter users for about 30 minutes. I haven’t done anything since then.

By virtue of who I am, what I’ve called the list, and who is on it so far, someone might have the expectation that it is better than it really is. I do hope to make it a great list but without good tools for finding new list members, and removing some misfits, I don’t have much hope.

I bet that 99% of lists out there were built quickly and will remain static.

I see the need for tools that will cross-reference many lists on a subject to ensure quality. Curation tools, if you will. TLISTS sounds like it might be such a tool when it is available.