2010 February, 10th

Kristen Nicole

Will Google Buzz really be a game changer? There’s no real way to tell at this point, but it does offer an intriguing set of tools for us to consider. As a Gmail tool, Google Buzz integrates a good portion of your social networking activity into your email inbox. Making the act of sharing your thoughts and content to your social networking profiles and more directly to your friends, Google is in fact upping the convenience factor for its recent efforts regarding its own Google Apps.

That being said, there’s also a good amount of concern around privacy and Google’s potential to take over the other major social networks–Facebook and Twitter. As Google Buzz can integrate with your other social networks in limited fashions, the idea is to centralize the bulk of your social networking behavior to make it easier for you to manage. If Google didn’t do it, who would?

There are a few services out there that have wanted to centralize all of your social networking activity in just this way–some took an email integration approach, while others turned to browser add-ons or browsers themselves. Google has been incorporating many of its socially-integrated tools that were already existing on some of its apps (namely Gmail) to create a new utility for its users.

The most revolutionary aspect of Google Buzz, though, is–well, not a whole lot. The concept isn’t new, and Yahoo has already been working on similar implementation for its own applications and email-related services. Not to mention, there’s already a tool called Yahoo Buzz, though it’s a social bookmarking tool and not an email-client service add-on. Beyond that, Google just made it easier to do some of the things we were already doing with our Gmail.

In this regard, I actually like what Google is doing. In waiting for social media sharing to reach its current level of adoption based on the permeatiion of Facebook and Twitter, Google is able to enter on the convenience factor instead of directly competing with Facebook and Twitter. On the other hand, it may just appear that Google is too late in the game. As a social utility, however, Google can be less concerned with direct traffic and more concerned with its ability to create a semi-searchable hub for your social networking activity.

So should Facebook be concerned? It’s biggest trump move would be to block Google from integrating too much with its own network, though that wouldn’t appear to be a very nice move. Facbook has already limited the options provided to Google from a search and accessibility standpoint, giving priority to Microsoft Bing search in some instances. As an open network, and a network helping to establish the standards around open network sharing, Facebook may see some backlash if it decides to further limit Google’s accessibility to its content for something such as Google Buzz.

Apple has a pretty strict top-down approach to its cooperative deals with other companies running apps on its mobile platform, and Google has already seen rejection from Apple for Google Voice. Considering Google’s ability to replace so much of the services provided by other companies, Google also has the potential to further alienate itself by increasing its number of competitors. Of course, its ability to become a threat to the likes of Facebook means that users have to recognize the utility that Google is extending through new releases such as buzz.

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About the Author

Kristen was the lead writer and Field Editor of Mashable, a popular publication that covers social media and tech. She has contributed to a number of other publications including CenterNetworks, VentureBeat, Bubblicious and The Industry Standard. Her work has been syndicated across a number of main stream media outlets, including Reuters, The New York Times, and NBC. Her latest accomplishment has been co-authoring The Twitter Survival Guide, which you can purchase here. She is also completing her second book, Twitter for Women.

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