The Buzz Around Google

The company’s new social media service has a nice suite of features, but can it find its place in an already crowded market?

I haven’t been able to try Google Buzz yet, but here are some thoughts from the outside looking in.

The decision to use Gmail as the platform to establish a foothold in social media is smart – probably the second best thing Google could have done aside from buying Twitter. The idea of creating a service within something that 175 million people use each month makes total sense.

Google Buzz also scores points with a nice suite of features so it can be used to provide links to other social media platforms – something that will expand down the road. Being able to create mini websites from each update is also interesting.

That said, Google Buzz faces some major challenges. Perhaps the biggest is how willing people will be to embrace yet another social media service when they are already using Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, etc.

Once someone has their social media “tool box” set, it can be difficult to squeeze in another tool – even if it has some utility. It’s the reason, for example, that I have resisted multiple invitations to join Plaxo. While I’ve heard good things about it, I don’t have the appetite for it because it would be just something else to keep updated.

Google Buzz could face the same challenge attracting users beyond those on the bleeding-edge. Its adoption could come down to whether or not it proves itself to be more useful and user-friendly than what is already out there, so it starts to replace other tools – Facebook, Twitter, etc. – in those digital tool boxes.

All of this is new territory for Google, which has a pretty mediocre record when it comes to social media – something highlighted by Fortune Magazine’s Jessi Hempel.

Sure, Blogger is one of the leading blogging platforms, but you could argue that Google hasn’t done much with it over the years. Orkut is a raging success in Brazil, but it’s an ugly sister compared to Facebook and MySpace.

When Google co-founder Sergey Brin was asked about the company’s lack of social media success, he danced around the topic, suggesting that Google has had “a lot of success.” He added that Buzz has the potential to bring social communications and productivity closer together, saying, “I think a lot of past services have focused on just friends and entertainment.”

I guess Brin doesn’t see Twitter as a productivity tool, even though it has become a great way to discover new services and content, as well as conduct R&D, generate feedback, and handle customer service.

Time will tell whether Google can maintain the buzz.

This story originally appeared here and here. For more about the author, Mark Evans, visit his website.