Blending and rehashing existing functionality is getting a bit tired don't you think? There's nothing new or innovative here, just an attempt to grasp and see if there's a market out there. It seems like an attempt to do stuff just because management is convinced that twitter is cool.

Backed by the 0 ability to market that Google has, this is destined to be as successful as all of their other ventures excepting adwords.

Looks cool - but once the buzz has gone, I reckon buzz will probably go the same way as orkut and froogle...

BTW - AT&T Services, Inc. own buzz/com which is being promoted as "your social net for business recommendations from the people you trust most". Bet they are loving this for some good free traffic...

Google playing catchup.
It's over google, facebook has won.

The entire internet will get into facebook.

does this mean google will de-index twitter posts and replace them with buzzzzzzz.

Hope this will be easy to deactivate.

does this mean google will de-index twitter posts and replace them with buzzzzzzz.

Good Question

Google has already started to show fewer Twitter posts. Try to search for "Superbowl". You'll see a rolling feed of news stories, but not tweets.

Twitter twooted. If their traffic continues the downward trend, nobody will buy it.

CMOs at Proctor & Gamble, Hyundai, Delta, Ford, Chevrolet, and others are finding that Twitter does not work for them. It is basically useless and it adds no value to their brand.

According to a recent Pew Internet survey, 80% of users never returned to the site after signing up.

A study by the Nielsen revealed 60% of Twitter users do not return from one month to the next.

A report by RJ Metrics found that only 17% of Twitter users updated their accounts in December — an all-time low.

Reminds me of that Andrew Lloyd Webber rock musical from the late 1960's... "What's The Buzz" and the refrain: "tell me what's happening..." and just like there was no answer then, there will be no answer now, except that there is a greater power out there and it's name is... (Rhymes with ghod)...

God, kill me now, do we really need more social networking. More idiots talking about laundry and spammers spamming each other.

I need buzz about as much as a i need an ipad - blah

Hey me too

Great, so now everyone I email will know what I'm up to all the time...Pretty lame. I was trying to stay out of social media.

And Google will help you find only the stuff that matters by recommending popular content

So what does being popular mean?

Wikipedia is hugely popular in terms of users but quite frankly it's not my favorite site on any subject any more than I sit back to read encyclopedias when i feel like a good book... so you could say it's not popular at all.

You will get social updates in your inbox

No, I won't, but thanks for offering.

A lot of major companies are jumping to try and help twitter/facebook type sites but this late in the social networking game I don't see majr companies jumping on board with Google as quickly... heck Microsoft might even pay them not to and everyone still talks anti-trust against google anyway!

I think this wave went over the top of them. Too late.

Google more and more acts like a government that has completely lost the plot. They frantically and thoughtlessly launch new products (like governments launch new laws) that step on everybodies toes or -if not that- just annoy users. Are they that desparate to find "the next big thing" that they have to take up the fight with Twitter?

Shouldn't they rather develop a genuine product strategy that focuses on their core strengths and on their users, and then execute this strategy with excellence. Also, many Google products need fixes, be it in the way they work or in the way they look. IMO they should put their energy into fixing these instead of forgetting about them and launching new stuff.

I get this image of a giant boulder, emblazoned with "FaceBing", falling towards Wile E. Coyote, who is holding an umbrella that says "Buzz" on the side.

I think there is a line between social media and general internet usage that Google are failing to see. If I wanted to use a social site I would. When I am using email I expect it to be just that, email.

Google should really spend a lot more time thinking out products. Google search was great, and word of mouth was what got them to where they are. The days have passed where any new product will be sucessfull just because of the Google brand.

If Google is to advance into new markets they need to think of somethign new, and unique. I actualy asked a few people I know today "Do you have a Google account?" out of seven people not one answered yes, although I know two of them are Youtube members.

Google is still essentialy a company followed by Geeks. It's us that have Google accounts, and its us these crazy products are being aimed at.

Mack.

I think there is a line between social media and general internet usage that Google are failing to see. If I wanted to use a social site I would. When I am using email I expect it to be just that, email.

They spent time and money on Wave only to see it fail almost instantly. They must assume that by forcing it in our faces with Gmail we will grow to accept it.

Personally, I think the addiction with status updates (Facebook, Twitter, now Buzz) is getting insane. Are people so into themselves they think everyone is wondering what they're doing/thinking at all times? Is it possible to live life without running to the computer and posting what you're about to do? If a tree falls in the woods but no one updates its status does it make a noise?

I feel the same as others here have indicated. Do we really need another way of connecting? I don't have enought time to update the ones i'm on as it is, without having another.

Gmail is e-mail. I don't really want my contacts updated with their or my status on there.

The rot set in with google wanting me to make my gmail address an account for adsense, adwords, etc.. That has really screwed things on my desktop having got more than one gmail account. Some are for personal and some are for business. When they forced the switch, it has left a mess that I have decided I will live with, until the next time they force a change.

The advantage with FB is that you go there to interact with friends and business. If you go to gmail, I expect to use it for e-mail. It's a as simple as that. I very much doubt that I will link any of my social networking accounts with this, or interlink them to a great extent. It's not social networking if it's all networked, it becomes broadcasting, or at the low end, it's spam.

If a tree falls in the woods but no one updates its status does it make a noise?

I think I may have to make that into a sign for our office wall.

Will they come up with the cool graphic that would say: Follow me on GMAIL or will it be "BUZZ my GMAIL" or GMAIL-Buzz-Me?

well as long as it is not "GORG my BUZZ" I guess, cause that will be a competition to a previously popular product that was called Chaser®....

They spent time and money on Wave only to see it fail almost instantly.

That's an interesting comment.

I also have wondered in the past why Google seems to lack even the most basic product management skills. In any Fortune 500 company, products that are launched are usually put through rigorous testing, both from technical side and from marketing. These units should work closely together: the engineers make sure that the product actually works (i.e. does what the marketeers are going to promise to the consumer), and the marketeers make sure that there is demand for the product that the engineers are putting together.

THIS IS MARKETING 101, yet Google clearly does not understand this.

Given their track record of launching products that fail to attract an audience (beyond some tech geeks and Google fanbois), one must wonder what all the people in MV are doing. Counting cash?

I can just see it now...

Your friend Joe blogs just received an email from his bank.
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financial planing and advice
www.example.com
ads by Google

Seriously I don't know whay Google think people will want social tools in somethign that is essentialy suposed to be private.

Mack.

Google has temporarily lost sight of its self-declared mission objective to "organise the world's information".

If they had any smarts they would be using their collective intelligence not to duplicate Twitter with a second-rate rip-off product (Buzz looks to me like it is to Twitter what MS Silverlight is to Adobe Flash)...

... but to come up with the best Status-feed Search there is, which simultaneously searches and aggregates Twitter, Facebook statuses, RSS feeds etc.

Kind of like Google News but for short-status services. After all, is there any easy way at present to search for Tweets on the evening prior to Obama winning the Presidential election. No? Why not? Isn't this supposed to be the kind of problem Google set itself up to tackle?

If Google built such a Meta-Status Search and Display Engine, that would be an original product capitalising on Google's strengths and living up to their mission objective.

Why can't they do that?

Exactly Mack.

More unimportant and uninteresting low grade content I’m going to have to make sure my ads are NOT displaying next to.

Your friend Joe blogs just received an email from his bank.
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Haha, I think it'll just be a social service on the side, like GChat. Pretty sure mail will continue to stay private.

At least I would hope so.

Awfully derivative. Not a game-changer, IMHO.

Eurydice - I'm afraid you're mistaken. Twitter traffic is at an all time high:

From: mashable.com/2010/02/10/twitter-tweet-volume/

"Maybe Twitter doesn’t have a growth problem after all. According to new stats out today from Royal Pingdom, Twitter saw an all-time high of more than 1.2 billion tweets in January. Perhaps this is what CEO Evan Williams meant last month when he said that the site was hitting records “across all the metrics that matter.”

Diving a bit deeper into the numbers, Royal Pingdom reports that tweet volume grew by 16x from January ’09 to January ’10. Over the past three months, tweet volume has grown steadily at around 17 percent. In other words, if tweet volume is the metric that matters, Twitter is still growing at a very healthy clip.

Questions about Twitter’s growth have stemmed from other publicly available analytics data that shows the site is seeing a flat-to-down number of unique visitors hit its website each month. That data though, as has often been pointed out, doesn’t take into account those that use Twitter through third-party apps, both on the desktop and via mobile devices."

Ford has actually used Twitter with great success and employs a Twitter Evangelist @ScottMonty to drive the word and during his BlogWorld Conference keynote last year he was extolling the virtues of Twitter an the success they have had with it. Dell Outlet put out a case study on how they have generated $6.5MM in revenue from 40 accounts. I work directly with Travelzoo and can report a great deal of success also and finally, we here at WebmasterWorld and PubCon use Twitter to promote PubCon and have seen significant returns from our time investments.

Twitter has a great future IMHO.

Twitter has a great future IMHO.

Assuming celebrities stick with it. Twitter is surviving because people of interest are using it (not that they have anything interesting to say), if they keep using it then it'll stay afloat. If they move to the next big fad it won't.