Swedish marketing technologist Dennis Hettema has created a hot-item tracking website for the most-shared items on Google Buzz, called Buzrr. The site is very simple right now, it doesn’t include categories, there’s no description of how it works (“we are jumping through a bunch of hoops,” Hettema says) and the “new buzz” column is already full of spam. People love this kind of thing, though, so check it out.

Tweetmeme had similar beginnings and is now quite an impressive little company. Google Buzz has a lot of potential, and Buzzr is worth watching too.
Ultimately, popularity contests are only so interesting – but they do draw a crowd. If Buzzr can execute on really counting Buzz shares of stories, then maybe it could gain some critical mass and do some more interesting things with the data.
Buzzr has taken a page out of Tweetmeme’s book by prominently featuring a website button to share a story on Buzz, something that put the interests of publishers, users and Tweetmeme all in sync for that company.
On the other hand, there is a whole lot of backlash already concerning Buzz’s intrusiveness. That’s why we decided not to push content there automatically but to engage in conversations there instead. If that’s how the medium shapes up then services like Buzzr may not be as widely embraced as the number-pumping Tweetmeme has been.
Time will tell; since Google Buzz’s most disruptive quality is its open data standards, there should be a whole lot of services built on top of it soon.
