Google announces new Google Buzz social service
Google announced today that it is once again going to try its hand at social media with the announcement of Google Buzz: A social media service built right inside of your existing Gmail account.
The history of Google is littered with its forays into the social media scene. The company purchased Jaiku, a Twitter-like service, only to kill it off shortly thereafter. Dodgeball was another attempt by the search giant to buy its way into social media that failed. And while Orkut, a full-fledged social network, has had success in countries such as Brazil and India, it failed to capture a huge audience in the United States.
What sets the new Google Buzz apart from all of the other attempts is that it an internal creation of Google, and it integrates seamlessly with its already popular Gmail product.
Rolling out over the next few days to users everywhere, Google Buzz will become a new selection in your sidebar in Gmail, similar to when you click on Drafts, Contacts or other choices. You will find a page that is built with followers culled from your most contacted contacts at first, and it will show you information they choose to share from services such as Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, Google Reader and YouTube. You will then be able to comment on items they share, send messages to other users that you think should definitely take note of something and even choose to share things privately with only people you select as opposed to it going out to everyone. Items that are shared publicly will also be indexed in search engines and also be displayed on your Google profile page.
The true integration with Gmail comes in that some items will find their way into your Gmail Inbox. If you post a new article, and people start commenting on it, you will be able to open that item directly in your Gmail and post replies to it and interact with the item on a continuing basis.
Mobile users won’t be left out of the fun of Google Buzz either. Android and iPhone users, with more platforms coming later, will be able to go to the mobile version of the Google home page, click the Buzz icon, and you will then be able to geotag where you currently are thanks to your phone’s built-in GPS. You can then see items people have Buzzed near you, see nearby Buzzes on Google Maps and so on.
In one fell swoop, Google has come knocking on the doors of social services such as Yelp, Foursquare, FriendFeed and Twitter. And thanks to its integration with an already well known and popular product such as Gmail, it could quite possible have some legs to it.
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