Yahoo! Buzz was released in August 2008, but where was the hype and fuss surrounding it’s launch? Yahoo, according to Hitwise statistics (as of week ending 06/02/2010) is the biggest webmail provider, followed by Hotmail and Gmail. But rarely do the others cause as much of a ‘Buzz’ (pun inexcusable) as Google, and naturally Yahoo! aren’t too happy about this. Whereas Yahoo! Buzz is more of a social news service, it also claims to have over 200 Yahoo! and third-party sites feeding into it, and is fully implemented throughout the Yahoo! network.

Google, is trying to get in on the Social bandwagon, but are they too late?

They released Google Social Search at the end of last month and yesterday they begun rolling out Google Buzz.

Social search

The layout of Google’s search results page has changed quite a bit in recent months with the addition of the toolbar on the left-hand side providing various options for search, along with the inclusion of twitter [real-time] results relating to current/hot topics.

Social Search provides results from those within my “Social Circle” – that is those I’m connected with online, and have told Google about in my Google Profile.

Data Google is trawling for my social search results:

• Direct connections from your Google chat buddies and contacts (7)
• Direct connections from links listed on your Google profile (305) such as Twitter and FriendFeed
• Secondary connections (1491) that are publicly associated with your direct connections

By looking at the Social Content page I can see which of my profiles are being implemented into the search results. No Twitter or Facebook yet – if ever?

From here I can see what people I follow have to say.

As we trust the opinions of those we know, this is a step forward giving relevant results from sources we can hopefully rely on.

Google Buzz

Buzz has been implemented into the Gmail accounts of users and is also available on mobile. Followers can be added through their public Google Profile. Not dissimilar from the social networks we are aware of at this stage; status updates, complete with GPS location tracking - not limited to 140 characters public or private sharing of media and fully supported to send updates from Twitter, Flickr, Picassa, Blogger and Youtube. Though no Facebook integration.

It won’t be a surprise to many that Google have brought out a service like this. The question is will the uptake be big widespread. Remember Wave?

The Internet is social, and when all these tools combine, more choice is offered and indeed greater ease to those who are set in their ways of using one or the other. There will be those who don’t want another Social Network to be distracted by, and yet another site to check regularly to see what their friends are up to. On the other hand – for those who aren’t yet on Facebook (really, who isn’t), implementing this into Gmail, one of the most popular, and at least most respected webmail services, it will likely encourage the others to try out a bit of ’status updating’ and sharing links and photos and such.

One of the problems I find with many new services added to the Google portfolio is that they are enabled for gmail users before Google Apps users. I first got my @gmail address when it was still in private beta, but no longer use it having moved all my mail to my new address, managed through Google Apps, I don’t want to interact with people using my Gmail address. Although I have a standard Apps account, there are those who pay for the service, and although Buzz may not be designed for business use, surely, paying customers shouldn’t be left behind? Google have stated that they are in the processes of introducing this and will notify of changes through the mailing list. I feel I share the exact sentiments of David Coursey of PCWorld in asking why we are left behind – and why any documents saved in Google Docs disappear from my apps account, but that’s for another time…

It is quite an assumption to think I want to follow those I’ve emailed in the past, or vice versa. As well as having my inbox clogged with the buzz of crap. I get enough of that elsewhere and really don’t need another.

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