Google Launches "Google Buzz" for Social Networking

Bradley Horowitz VP of Product Management at Google launched the newest attempt by Google to compete with Facebook and Twitter today. Designed to help you get value from your growing online network of friends and acquaintances Google Buzz offers 5 features. 

1. Auto-Follow - first time you use it it auto follows everyone in your Gmail account

2. Rich fast sharing experience - Includes Media, shortcuts, Twitter

3. Public and Private Sharing - 

4. Inbox Integration - 

5. Just the Good Stuff - A relevancy filter to highlight items

Other features include YouTube and Flickr and Picasso viewing in the application (these have been available with Google Labs for Gmail for sometime) Setting up groups in the Public/Private side is easy and well done.

Inbox Integration is smart and it avoids the fire hose of emailing you every time you have interaction plus it features the real-time interaction that was first premiered in Google Wave. The system has a recommended Buzz feature that tracks who your friends are interacting with or reading and you have the choice to feedback yes/no to recommendations and it will learn over time. Google is relying on its algorithm capabilities to do this at a huge scale.

The good news is that Google recognized the growing trend of social networking interaction on mobile devises and made sure to include it in Google Buzz. They are leveraging location/GPS services in mobile devices to tie your location to Google maps and Google Place pages.

They have integrated the Buzz functions into http://m.google.com from your mobile device, and new application for Buzz at http://buzz.google.com and new integration with Google Maps. Roll out will happen for all Gmail users over the next couple days. Look for the Buzz icon on the left hand navigation of your Gmail page. Url's above will go active at 12 PM MST according to Google.

It looks like the only missing piece is that they did not roll out integration with Facebook or other social networking platform

How to ruin a media empire...a step by step guide

Having been an active participant in both online and magazine publishing for over 15 years I feel at least a little qualified to voice an opinion on what Rupert Murdock is doing with his company News Corporation. Its clear that Mr. Murdock's view of internet based content is behind the times. While the Wall Street Journal has been an exception to the rule of fee based web sites I believe the part he is missing is why. Consumers of online information and news expect it to be free and easy to access. Readers of publications like WSJ tend to expense their access to this type of information and as times get tighter in the enterprise you can expect that these types of business subscriptions disappear in favor of free resources.

A recent piece of Forrester Research seems to back up my opinion. 80% just said NO Mr. Murdock

News Corp's latest attack against the norm is its ongoing issues with Google and their recently announced intention to stop Google from indexing their publications and to strike an exclusive deal with search engine Bing. Some analyst have estimated the change could cost News Corp up to 15 million annually. And it will reduce its overall search exposure to only 9.9% of traffic globally, Bings present search market share.

As Mr. Murdock continues to build walls around his content the thought struck me that this practice may in fact be hurting all content seeking Internet users. If this move to exclusive search partnerships actually gets traction it will hurt all of us. How would you like a future where you have to remember which search engine carries which companies content? Comprehensive content search could become a thing of the past.

I would like to see News Corporation spend its time innovating instead of hiding content behind the fiscal walls of the company. I'm jealous of Mr. Murdock and his empire if I had resources like his I would strive to be a leader in the Internet revolution not a laggard.