Google a’buzz’ with social networking function

Could Google Buzz be the next social networking hit?

The new tool from Google combines several applications such as Google Reader and Picasa with Twitter or Facebook-like functionality.

The service was unveiled Feb. 9 and is accessible with a Google account from its e-mail service, Gmail.

“All my contacts are right there,” said Joshua Trimble, a Central Michigan University alumnus. “It’s my ideal Internet platform.”

Trimble, 27, is an IT Service and repairman at Carmen-Ainsworth Community Schools and resides in Flint.

His favorite feature of Google Buzz is how it incorporates all his Google services into one easily shared location.

He said he enjoyed that he could take a picture with his Motorola Droid phone, upload it to Google’s Picasa Web Albums and have his Web Albums account automatically sync with his Buzz account and notify all the users following him.

Trimble also appreciates Buzz’s synchronization with his Google Reader account, as it allows him to share an article over Buzz with his followers and take part in a dialogue about it, all from his Gmail inbox.

“Google is really expanding, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it,” Trimble said.

Information overload?

That rapid expansion is a concern for some people uncomfortable with the amount of information people readily feed into Google’s databases.

One blogger has already voiced her dissatisfaction that her abusive ex-boyfriend and his friends were made to automatically follow her Google Buzz account, which had her location and employment listed, according to a report by Business Insider.

Google released an update which revised Buzz’s automatic following features, though privacy issues remain a concern.

Associate professor of sociology Alan Rudy quoted University of Texas Professor Clay Spinuzzi’s Twitter Account.

“Buzz follows Google’s strategy of rapid innovation, rapid controlled failure, internal competition, disrupting competitors,” Spinuzzi said.

Rudy is an active user of several social networking sites and tools such as Twitter and Digsby, which he uses personally and professionally.

“My basic sense, at this point, is that students who use (Facebook) for status updates, (instant message) through (Facebook), AIM or some other software, and text regularly on their phone aren’t going to have much more use for Buzz than they have for Twitter,” Rudy said in an e-mailed statement.