The problem stemmed from the fact that Buzz was built on top of Gmail, Google's e-mail client. A confusing one-two punch in Buzz's default settings automatically followed Gmail users' most e-mailed contacts and then revealed those contacts publicly after a user "buzzed" about something.
After a public uproar, Google made a fix to Buzz's defaults within two days of its launch. But Buzz was never able to overcome the bad press.
The concept was intriguing, but ultimately flopped: Rather than build a new social network from scratch, Google wanted to instantly connect its nearly 300 million existing Gmail users. But Google found that people's most frequently e-mailed contacts aren't necessarily the people they want to interact with in a social network setting.
