PC World reports that Google announced a new social media tool on Tuesday called Google Buzz that is designed to link people’s Gmail accounts with features found in popular social media tools including Facebook and Twitter. Expected to be fully deployed within one week, Google Buzz allows people to share status updates, photos and videos with their network of friends.
“We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences),” wrote Gmail and Google Buzz Plus Project Manager Todd Jackson on the Google blog. “Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.”
However, rivals immediately jumped on Google Buzz as a misguided approach to social networking.
“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefited from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.”