Google Buzz brings Social Networking to Gmail

This week Google has released a direct competitor to Facebook and Twitter, two of the most popular social networks on the internet. Google Buzz adds all the functions of social networking, the ability to share links, photos, videos and status updates with others, right into the company's existing email service Gmail.

On Google's official blog, Gmail & Google Buzz Product Manager Todd Jackson describes Google Buzz as "a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting". It is already available on mobile phones (except Black Berrys at the time of this article, upsetting as that is) and will be rolling out to Gmail users within the next few days.

One of the big advantages of Google Buzz is its interface with Gmail. While Facebook does have an Inbox function and Twitter has direct messages, neither has the capability to send messages to both people on your personal network as well as general email addresses. This integration also means that those on your Gmail list who share Gmail accounts will already be on your friends list.

One new feature that Google Buzz offers is relevancy rankings of post by members. This function takes in consideration location of the sender, amount of comments, and what the post contains, than compares that to what it knows are your likes and dislikes. What this does is allow the more important post to go to the top of your news feed.  This function also collapses inactive post and small status messages like ?lol? or ?brb?

Buzz allows member to communicate with the @ function like on Twitter. It also sends users links and post based on what they and their friends are posting and commenting on. Users can also see what friends are talking about on Twitter or uploading on Youtube.

Watch this promo video for an idea of what Buzz does:



Another promo video, this one explains the mobile phone features of Buzz:

Google has tried to enter the world of social networking before.  The huge search engine and online advertising company last attempt to develop an online community was Orkut .  While it caught on in some parts of Asia and South America, it never became a hit in the United States.   This has lead some in the industry to say that Google should focus on purchasing Twitter rather than continue to create its own social networks. While Twitter has gained popularity this last year, it still does not have the value of Facebook, or the second largest social network Myspace.