Google’s Buzz, which adds Social Networking features to their popular GMail service, is a bit too Alpha and uncontrolled for me to participate in it right now.
Google’s Buzz seems to have most all the features that Twitter is missing, and Google is clearly going to take advantage of all the benefits of being Google to make it popular — most notably the inboxes of unspecified millions of Gmail users who’ll get Buzz as a service-within-the-service. My impression is that Google really, really wants this to be the dominant service in the still-evolving category of “that thing that Twitter does that doesn’t have a good name yet.”
Automatic friends lists (friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail)
“Rich fast sharing” combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it includes full-sized photo browsing
Public and private sharing (swap between family and friends)
• Inbox integration (instead of emailing you with updates, like Facebook might, Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content, like the photo viewer we mentioned above)
“Recommended Buzz” puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you’re not acquainted. Recommendations learn over time with your feedback.
Google Buzz is available today, and it should creep up as a new tab in Gmail any minute.