There's A New Cowboy In Town

Posted by: Nadia Owen, Business Communications 11 Feb 10 - 12:21PM | Social Media | World Wide Web

As my esteemed colleague Sotos already announced on Tuesday, Google is taking on Facebook and Twitter with "Buzz". The people at Google (like us regular mortals) already know that there's an abundance of social networking information roaming the www world, but Google clearly think that what the world really needs is a way to wrangle Twitter, MySpace and Facebook to tame information overload. And if the Google product happens to steamroll the existing social networking 'products', then whoops, but hey - such is life!

So, Tuesday will mark the launch of Google Buzz, which as Sotos mentioned, is built into a pre-existing and highly successful product: Gmail.

Google Buzz interior

"Buzz is like an entirely new world inside of Gmail," product manager Todd Jackson said. "Organising the worlds' social information has become a large-scale problem, the kind Google likes to solve."

Some of the key features include letting users post publicly via their Google profiles, or privately via their Gmail contacts. Buzz shows up as a virtual folder in Gmail, making posts and comments from friends a part of their email inbox.

It is designed to make sharing photos, videos and links very simple, with no need for URL shorteners.

Sergey Brin, one of Google's co-founders, says Buzz is not just a Facebook clone.

Buzz opens to the public in waves starting Tuesday, and should begin showing up in Gmail users' inboxes starting immediately. For those of you who have smartphones, and can't wait, check buzz.google.com on your mobile.

So saddle up - the social networking world is the new wild west, this should be interesting...