Google Social Networking - Google Buzz

Facebook has long been dominent in the market place but this week Hayley Underwood has been getting to grips with the Google alternative.

" Google Buzz is an extension of the Google Mail service offered by Google which the Internet giants hope will lure users away from alternative services such as Facebook.

Huge shock waves were initially created when Google introduced an e-mail service offering a huge 1GB of storage space. At this point in time most competitors were offering a feeble 2MB to 4MB. Nowadays a huge 7GB is offered as standard although providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo Mail offer an unlimited amount of storage at no charge.

Despite not having the advantage over the competition in this respect any longer, Google Gmail continues to be a popular service due to its ability to integrate well with other e-mail accounts and the way in which it allows you to manage your messages. As an example, Gmail groups together messages that are of the same subject, making them part of a conversation file. In this way you can manage large number of e-mails grouped into the same conversation quickly and easily so that deleting or achieving them doesn't cause a headache.

Google Gmail is free to use and paid for by advertising however the adverts are very small, non-intrusive and are targeted so that they are more relevant to subject matter that you might find of interest. There are no large graphic adverts and no pop-up or pop-under adverts to clutter your browser.

Google Buzz is a social networking application integrated into Gmail. It aims to offer a better method to share photos, links, videos, and events with your Gmail contacts and personally I believe it is rather coincidental that this was developed after Facebook announced plans they were developing their own email system.

Buzz has all the basic features that you would expect from a social networking application including the ability to share status updates, photos, links and videos both privately and publically. By entering a contacts Gmail address you can choose to follow them or add them as a friend. As with Facebook, other users can comment on public posts and show their appreciation for an update or users status by clicking the 'like' button.

You can direct a comment into a fellow users Gmail inbox by simply putting @ the beginning of your comment and the user name of that person is then hidden to protect their privacy. You can only use this feature with those in your Gmail contact list. By clicking on the arrow to the right of a post you can e-mail your contact directly, link content to the post or mute the buzz in your inbox.

Google Buzz also integrates with Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger, and Twitter meaning that you are able to share content from these applications directly. This is a nice feature as it allows you to post files and albums you may have already created without having to go through the hardship of creating them twice.

The social networking market has the potential for huge rewards, especially for a company such as Google that makes such a large amount of its profits from revenue generated by advertising. With news that Buzz will soon be available on the Android phone and iPhones platforms, it will almost certainly give the more established social networking sites a run for their money. "