Ben Young: Why you should pay attention to Google Buzz

Google Buzz! Google buzz. Hmmm. What do you think? I'll tell you what I think. It's here to stay.

Google Buzz is the latest service Google has added to its bow. In short Google says: "Go beyond status messages Share updates, photos, videos, and more. Start conversations about the things you find interesting."

So I hear you already, but Ben why another social service? I struggle
to keep up.

Well let me remind you what the other sites do. Twitter helps you
find people you don't know yet (reread that back to yourself) - your
twitter profile naturally attractions like minded people who you
should know but probably haven't bumped into yet.

Facebook is for people you don't care about. There is a reason you
haven't caught up with that old friend from high school, you didn't get on, the only reason to connect is to snoop on them.

Once you ride the wave of the first three or four months it gets dull. That is until you get an invite to Farmville, Mobwars or that latest viral game that is going about.

What is buzz for? Buzz is for people you actually interact with.

If Twitter is for discovering new people, Facebook is for reconnecting
with your old mates, Buzz is for the people you actually interact with
each and every day.

How many people do you know have a Facebook account? A lot. Twitter?
Not as many. Email? Everyone has an email account.

If you connect online it is a reasonable assumption you have an email. That's the thing that the social media hype misses, the fact that the biggest word of mouth platform online is still email.

You see GMail has (according to Wikipedia over 149 million users who log in monthly.

That stat is from July 2009 so the number must be much much higher.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter Buzz is launching with essentially
a userbase of over 100 million people...potentially even 200 million.
The first thing under your inbox is Buzz. People won't be able to
help themselves but use it.

Further your Buzz account is set up so you can follow the people you
email day to day which means Google can cater your feed to the people
that are important to you at this point in time.

Facebook implements similar technology measuring how often you view your friends profiles so they can display the most relevant contacts in the Newsfeed.

This exposure inside Gmail is huge. Facebook in fact is rumoured to
be working on upgrading its messaging platform to replace email, so
hey you never have a need to leave Facebook again. Microsoft sees
this potential so much that they have just released a plugin 'Social
Connector' to allow you to see what's happening amongst your friends from your inbox.

What about Google Wave? Wave I think is more valuable for enterprise
or internal use. Buzz is going to be their mainstream play. Watch
it, give it a play, I'm you won't be able to help yourself engage.

Ben Young from bwagy is the author of The Best Ideas are Free