Google Makes Gmail Social With New Status Update: Gmail Buzz

by amyellensoden | February 8, 2010 at 04:36 pm

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Sometime this week, Google has unveiled a new Gmail status update feature called Gmail Buzz for their e-mail service. The Wall Street Journal predicted that the formal announcement could happen today and it did. This move by Google is a step in the right direction towards making Gmail a much greater social media competitor with the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

Google could announce the new Gmail feature as soon as this week, said people familiar with the matter. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

The change adds a module to the Gmail screen that will display a stream of updates from individuals a user chooses to connect with, said one of these people. It is a format popularized by Facebook and Twitter.

Google's e-mail service has thus far only provided an option to alter "away settings," but the new Gmail Buzz feature will make Gmail much more social media friendly in general. The new Gmail feature will include a Facebook-type news feed with live updates from a user's Gmail contacts. The new feature not only resembles Facebook's popular status update option, but also Twitter's livefeed of tweets from an individual's followers.

Gmail Buzz will soon become more social media friendly. The status update feature will eventually include the option to share content from the Picasa photo service as well as YouTube. Google's move towards a more social Gmail service may come in light of Facebook's new layout change that recently took place. The new Facebook layout closely resembles the look of Gmail. It seems that Gmail could be on its way to becoming a social status contender with Twitter and Facebook with its new feature

Gmail Buzz has five key features, Todd Jackson, product manager for Google Buzz, said during a presentation for the press: auto following; rich, fast sharing experience; public and private sharing; inbox integration; and "just the good stuff."