Social media seems to have settled down into its middle age. People are happily married to their Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, some are stuck with Myspace, their high school sweetheart. A few even ended up with the strange one from the bar like Dogbook or Stache Passion.
Well, Google announced Monday that it wants to play the part of toned pool boy or steamy secretary homewrecker with its new product Google Buzz.
The new platform is described as being similar to Facebook’s status update, with sharing of links, photos and videos readily supported.
The major difference is that Google Buzz will live inside Gmail, which already has over 100 million users, making the social experience more message based than profile based.
Buzz automatically converts all Gmail contacts to the Facebook equivalent of friends (or the Twitter equivalent of followers), allowing you to post your favorite LOLcat photo simultaneously to friends, coworkers and that project partner from two semesters ago.
Luckily, Google has included a feature that many Facebook users have been screaming for, a “dislike”-esque button which will teach Buzz to filter out the annoying and unwanted.
Once again, Google has created a tempting product that prompts the question, how much information are we willing to turn over to a single company to enhance our online experience?
