Google Buzz

10/02/10 posted by Liz Niland

Have you heard the Buzz? Yes, the rumoured Google social product has been officially announced and will roll out to Gmail inboxes within the next few days. While you probably won’t be abandoning your Facebook account anytime soon, Google Buzz does feature some level of aggregation with Twitter, Flickr and the suspected stablemates Picasa and Youtube. While you can’t yet update your Twitter account from inside Buzz, we’re thinking it won’t take long until that functionality appears. After all, it is now even more obvious that Facebook are Buzz’s primary opposition, and it won’t surprise anyone if Google does all that it can to compete.

Here’s the official video from Google.

The part of this new product that I think shows the most promise is Google Buzz for mobile. For those that didn’t jump on board the Foursquare bandwagon, Buzz may be the location login look-in you’ve been searching for. Tied into Google Maps, Buzz enables you to share details about your current location, such as a review of a cafe or a suggestion of interesting nearby activities. These details can be shared either publicly, or with your own select contacts.

It is an interesting product but, like with the iPad, I think so many people were expecting so much more. Hopefully once it is fully up and running though, and more users can experience it, a better understanding of its implications can be developed. Both Microsoft and Yahoo are standing firm behind their own social products. Microsoft has dismissed Google Buzz as merely “another social network” while those from the Yahoo camp appear to be defending and promoting their own rather similar Buzz service. 



The biggest challenge for Google Buzz will be bringing the crowds. Particularly the Facebook crowds. Of course there are more internet users in the world than the 400 million that visit Facebook but, when it boils down to it, 400 million is an awful lot of people to either compete with - or to convince to cross the floor. Although I, along with a decent-sized handful of my friends, use Gmail, I upload all my photos, stories and social commentary to Facebook, and am unlikely to change my habits. And as eloquently noted in TechCrunch’s Buzz coverage, the one company absent from all of Google’s talk is the “800-pound social gorilla in the room: Facebook”.