The most important difference between Twitter and Facebook is the scope of communication. On Twitter, I follow people because they have a history of saying interesting things. And since I have a bunch of followers on Twitter that I have no idea who they are, my own posts tend to be aimed at a general audience. On the other hand, all my Facebook friends are people that I've met face-to-face, and I plan to keep it that way. I've added them to my network because of the chance they might say something interesting and there's a better than average chance they will simply because what they say is potentially relevant to me. Sure, Facebook profiles and posts can be public, too, but it's not set up with public consumption in mind, and the people I know who use it that way are far and few between.

With Google Buzz, these worlds collide. Like Facebook, it supports both public and private/grouped conversations. Like Twitter, it provides ways to publicly follow people without them making you their "friend". For Buzz to be successful, it will have to make this manageable. Currently, it's very much like taking the streams from my Facebook friends and the people I follow on Twitter and mashing them together. The more important stuff from my friends and family gets lost in the shuffle. To make this work, Buzz will have to attach some prioritization to messages depending on whether they originated from someone in one of my contact groups (ideally, it would provide a way to prioritize each person individually as well).  

It's going to be real user interface challenge to combine the simplicity of Twitter with the focused nature of Facebook. 

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