Google launches Google Buzz

Posted Wednesday 10th February 2010 by Allison in Social Media.

Google’s latest social network Google Buzz launched this week, pitching directly against popular rival sites Twitter and Facebook.

Google Buzz is directly integrated with Gmail and, although not yet available to all users, is expected to be rolled out into all accounts within a week. 

Buzz appears to be a hybrid of existing networking sites; there are the intimate networking facilities particular to Facebook which allow communication and sharing between those already connected to each other, and the mass-broadcast opportunities offered by Twitter.

Users of the service can post a public or private buzz, which is a status update, as well as share the content of and connect with other social networking sites like Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

Users get a profile page and Buzz lets you ‘follow’ people in order to share in their updates and photos, and there’s also the option to ‘like’ content.

You’ll also be recommended content that Buzz thinks will interest you.

Is Google Buzz a threat to Facebook?

Google buzz does, at first glance, appear to have cherry-picked the bits it thinks work best from existing social networking sites and amalgamated them into its own stab at stealing a slice of the pie for itself. But is Google Buzz a threat to Facebook?

Facebook is by far the most popular social networking site, gaining just short of 400 million users worldwide since its launch in 2004. In comparison, Gmail, which will host Google Buzz, can currently count its users at around 170 million.

The question is why would people migrate away from their favourite sites such as Facebook and Twitter to use Google Buzz? Because that is what will have to happen if Buzz hopes to anywhere near emulate the success of Facebook.

It should also be noted that this isn’t Google’s first attempt at making a splash in the social networking market. The company launched Orkut in 2004 which failed to catch on properly anywhere outside of Brazil.

Buzz seems very similar to what Yahoo is already doing by allowing people to view updates from other sites like Twitter and Flickr from their Mail page. Yahoo! Updates launched nearly a year and a half ago with the capabilities to keep friends and families connected with each other’s online activities, and although it does have users, it has no where near the numbers Google Buzz is presumably aiming for.

It remains to be seen whether Google has managed to select the best from the rest and created the network that everyone will want to use once Buzz is rolled out to all accounts within the next week, or whether this will be another of its network ideas which will fall by the wayside.

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