There is no doubt that Google’s new “Buzz” is their best impression of Facebook and Twitter, but will it actually become the new Facebook and Twitter? Google certainly hopes so, but it may prove more difficult than Google thinks.

Even though other former social networking giants like Friendster and even MySpace have fallen by the wayside, there is no reason to believe that Facebook and Twitter will join their former competitors in the social networking underworld just because Google has joined the fray.

Remember, Facebook has a growing base of more than 400 million users, and Twitter reportedly had their most successful month in January, boasting 1.2 billion Tweets. Do those numbers suggest users will whimsically depart? It doesn’t seem likely – even in light of Google’s impressive reach and considerable power.Continue reading...

Amidst the land of email, tweets, status updates, text messages, and IM’s comes yet another social networking tool – this time from Google.

In a quest to capture more of the social web market share, the Internet search leader has launched Google Buzz – a new networking service for their Gmail customers which gives users an opportunity to network and share updates, photos, and videos with their current email contacts through their computer, hand-held device and mobile phone.

And even though Buzz was just announced yesterday, it already has fellow industry techies buzzing about the potential for customers to get stung with this service.

With no separate set-up or establishment of a new friend list required, Google Buzz allows consumers to automatically share updates with the people they already email and chat with the most. Similar to Facebook, users can communicate with one person or their entire network at a time.Continue reading...