Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2010, as a news piece, and the events described were current then. Google Buzz launched in February 2010 and was shut down in December 2011, and Picasa, also mentioned, was retired in 2016, so the service described no longer exists.
Google Buzz is going after Twitter and Facebook. Social networks have been a runaway success, and Google didn’t want to sit on its hands in a field that, until now, had been unknown territory for the internet giant.
Google will have to carve out a space alongside Twitter, the best-known microblogging service on the planet. In reality, though, Google can’t really be called a direct competitor to Twitter, because Google Buzz goes much further in terms of features: there are no limits on message length, and you can insert photos and videos. It also encourages you much more to share all kinds of content, whereas Twitter is a more passive medium with lots of limitations.
When it comes to Facebook, however, the situation is more complicated, because Facebook is becoming a real threat to Google in the search arena. Google has always had Facebook in its sights, since both aim to let people share everything directly and to take over the internet search market.
Here are the advantages Google Buzz has over Facebook.
Google Buzz is fully tied to your email address, so your contacts are already part of your network. Every time you click on the Buzz folder built into Gmail, you’ll see updates from the people and media you follow, and you can add text, photos, links, videos and more.
Like practically all Google services, Google Buzz is linked to the others, so your Buzz contacts will know straight away if you add a new photo to Flickr or Picasa, or if you publish something on your blog. Your Twitter updates will show up too.
Anyone who decides to start using Google Buzz should think about the privacy settings they want, because everything you do in Gmail will be public if you don’t set those options properly. This is easy to do in the Buzz folder itself, which has a very simple and intuitive interface.
Apart from that, it’s a promising new service, and only time will tell whether it manages to unseat the number one social network, Facebook.
Featured image: Runner1928, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
