With Buzz, Google takes on social networking rivals

February 10, 2010 | Internet Marketing

Google and Facebook are on a collision course in the increasingly competitive market for social networking services. The new service, called Google Buzz, allows Gmail users to share updates, photos and videos as on Facebook and other social networking sites.

Buzz is Google’s boldest attempt to build a social network that can compete with Facebook and Twitter. The service is built into Gmail, which already has 176 million users, according to comScore, a market research company. And Buzz comes with a built-in circle of friends, a group that is automatically selected by Google based on the people that a user communicates with most frequently in Gmail and on Google’s chat service.

Like other social services, Buzz allows users to post status updates that include text; photos from services like Google’s Picasa and Yahoo’s Flickr; videos from YouTube; and messages from Twitter. Analysts say many of its features mimic those of Facebook.

“It is a direct challenge to Facebook, in particular,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a social media analyst with the Altimeter Group.

Get the full story at The New York Times

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