10 February 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Google Buzz offers social networking through Gmail

Google has unveiled its latest foray into social media, which aims to bring together the company's various services while also providing a social networking platform to rival Twitter and Facebook.

It was reported yesterday that Google would be announcing big changes to its social media strategy involving Gmail, and Google Buzz looks to be a major project for the Mountain View giant. FT.com predicts that the new service will integrate applications as diverse as Google Wave and Google Voice, while also aiming to rival the simplicity of 140-character tweets and the close social connections of Facebook. A mammoth task indeed.

Google Buzz will be integrated into Gmail, similar to the recent overhaul of Yahoo! Mail, and appears similar in design to FriendFeed - the lifestreaming service acquired by Facebook in August.

The Official Google Blog informed prospective users: "Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch - it just works."

The company's intent is to reduce the "noise" in social networking, providing a streamlined platform that makes it easier to sort through status updates, tweets and media streams, while also adding additional features such as location data and related information.

Google explained: "If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most.

"We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time."

The new service will be available to Gmail users over the next few days, and will instantly create a list of followers from users' existing contacts. If all users sign up to the service, Google could instantly acquire the largest social network after Facebook - but with 400 million people using the world's leading social networking site, Google still has its work cut out if it hopes to dominate the social sphere.