Introducing Google Buzz
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 7:33PM | Print Article Five years ago Google re-invented e-mail with the introduction of Gmail. Over time Gmail has evolved with the addition of integrated chat, video and some amazing labs. Today Google unveiled their long rumoured social networking product known as Google Buzz, which is built directly into Gmail and is even available on your mobile.
The main advantage of Buzz is that it utilises a platform that 170 million people already know how to use, as a result there is nothing to set-up as you're automatically following the people you email and chat with the most, based on your existing Gmail contact list.
Buzz enables you to easily share in real time status updates, photos, videos, links and more, either publicly (to the world) or privately (to a specific group of contacts). The tight integration with Gmail guarantees that any updates are always visible from your main inbox, which makes following-up as simple as responding to an e-mail. Buzz is also capable of pulling content from third party services, such as Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, Google Reader and YouTube which means you can continue to use other services as you have in the past. Finally, Buzz includes a recommendation system that constantly learns from your usage to ensure the the content being shown is meaningful to you.
The video below from the Google Blog provides an overview as to how Buzz works and what you might use it for.
Buzz is clearly Google's boldest attempt at social networking to date. The fact that it is integrated into a well established service with a massive consumer base is clearly a major plus. I think the TechCrunch article sums up the new service perfectly: "Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail."
My question would be, if Buzz is our direct link to a Google Social Network, then where does this leave Wave? I suspect Google see Buzz as a stepping stone to Wave and over time we will see more cross over between the two services.
Be sure to keep checking your Gmail account for the new Buzz link.