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