How to Add a Location to Google Buzz

One of the things I love about Foursquaure is the ability for users to add locations.  Not only can you add businesses you can add things like trail heads, historic locations or your favorite place at the park.  I immediately noticed this feature was missing when I started playing around with Google Buzz.  There was a list of nearby venues but no way to add the location you were at if it was missing.

We know Buzz is tightly integrated with Google Maps so it occurred to me that I could probably just add the location there and hopefully it would show up in the Buzz “nearby” list.

Google Maps is only set up to recognize businesses as locations but there is nothing to stop you from adding say, your local dog park.  All you have to do is go to this url: www.google.com/local/add and type in the address and description of the location you want to add.  As far as I can tell you need an actual address and can’t add just the GPS location like you can in Foursquare.  The only downside is that Google needs to confirm the location by calling your phone number with a pin number you then type in to verify the listing.  Unfortunately your phone number then shows up as the contact for that location on Google Maps.  I haven’t figured out a way to get around this yet.

After adding the Balboa Park Playground as a location to Google Maps it showed up in the Buzz “nearby” list about half an hour later.  Very cool.

Hopefully Buzz will make it possible to add any location, GPS or address,  from within the app itself but this is an acceptable workaround for now.