Until now, despite the general public, Google has been unable to get on the train of social networks which are within the “real-time search” as Facebook, Friendfeed (recently acquired by the first) and Twitter. Tuesday evening, the world number one search engine has launched its first major initiative in this area. The project is called Google and Buzz is a service built into Gmail that gives users the ability to merge your contacts in one place and view online activity.
There will be message boards and profiles, such as Microsoft or Yahoo, you can comment “I like!” as on Facebook and you can communicate with their contacts as on Twitter, but also post links, pictures and information about its location from the phone, or how about Foursquare OpenPlayce. The system has no configuration, but is activated by your Gmail account, with automatic recovery of the contacts and the ability to limit the vision of the information on their network of friends or make them fully public.
For Google, Buzz goes beyond the service provided, allowing the user to find in a natural way, or almost, what it seeks in the flow of information published by their contacts. Intention of creating a buzz building “automatic” the Net, automatically creating your profile accounts of Internet users who interact regularly or frequently cited in the contacts list. Each proposal may be rejected and the user’s choice to be made more precise characteristics of the profile.
Automatically updated, the interface is able to incorporate video, photographs or other content appearing on third party services: YouTube and Picasa certainly, but also competitors like Twitter or Flickr. Photo galleries and videos are read directly from Buzz without the need to provide more information. Those who wish, may eventually merge their content with their geographic coordinates, which will appear in the form of a small paper Google Maps.
The Internet may be set out in search of messages between the public profiles, which were sent from nearby cities or regions. Google Buzz will be activated in the next few days within Gmail, where a card will indicate the availability of the service. In parallel, will also be accessible from mobile phones, Android and iPhone at first, then Symbian, Blackberry and Windows Mobile as a Web application to be launched by the browser.
Under a name so trivial “Buzz”, Google wants to revive his idea of “organize the world” in real time. E ‘, an aspect that touches for months, such as indexing Twitter messages in real time or by offering, in early 2010, the display of search results that may arouse the interest of the interior. As such, Google Buzz is probably a challenge for the company in Mountain View.
Although not yet exploited, are already available for Buzz programming interfaces that will boost the service. Google has decided not to close their doors, promising compatibility since its launch with all formats as the standard on the Internet, RSS, Atom and OAuth, to allow more complex interactions than the simple aggregation of feeds. Instead, Buzz does not currently allow the export of data published on a competing service, but the functionality is being studied.
Designed more as a platform than as an independent service, Buzz may not have immediate success: the interior reluctant to entrust their personal information to Google would not use the service. Google Buzz is Wave will be united by the same fate?
