Google Buzz integrates social networking features into Google Mail

 

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Posted on 9 Feb 2010 at 18:37

Google has announced its plans to enter social networking by implementing new features, collectively known as Google Buzz, into Google Mail.

It's "a Google approach to sharing," said Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product Management, helping you to "find the signal in the social networking noise."

Buzz focuses on five key features: Auto-following; a rich, fast sharing experience; public and private sharing; inbox integration and just the good stuff.

The auto-following feature automatically follows people who you already talk with and builds a new social graph without having to bother looking for it. It will also allow both public and private sharing of updates.

It integrates directly into your Google Mail inbox in a way that "goes beyond normal email," but uses all of your favourite Google Mail shortcuts. With Buzz, you can share links, photos and content from around the web. This includes data from Twitter, Google Reader and other sources.

Buzz allows you to import links to web pages, as well as data from those pages, such as images or photos - it's very similar to what Facebook does, but with more power and functionality.

Looking closer at how Buzz integrates into Google Mail, it looks as if it won't be an annoyance for even the most casual email user, as Buzz updates will be put directly into your inbox. When you open the feed, it will act as a small Buzz window and not a regular email - and it does all of this in real-time.

Buzz has been built to filter out the clutter normally associated with social networks - especially Twitter - and will allow users to filter out content that isn't interesting to them. In order to make sure you're kept up to date, Buzz will recommend certain content that it thinks you're interested in - if it's not of interest, you can filter the content out of the recommendation engine.

Google is also introducing a Google Profile page, where your public updates will be posted. This is clearly targeting both Twitter and Facebook - it'll be interesting to see how both respond. Google says that the service will be rolled out to all Google Mail users over the next few days - we'll bring you more when we've had chance to get a closer look at it.

Author: Tim Smalley