Where Does Google Buzz Fit In Today’s Social Networking?

As many already heard, a few days ago Google threw their hat into the social networking ring with Google Buzz.  Google has a great reputation for building existing things in ways that we never thought to use before, so while their latest solution isn’t exactly being discarded, many are asking “why do we need another social networking method?”

The first thing to evaluate is how you use existing social networking now.  For me, I three primary methods: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Each of them serves a unique purpose while offering overlap:  Facebook is my outlet for friends and family that I know on a personal level to some degree, conversing with my contacts the same as if I was at a bar having a beer; LinkedIn is on the other side of the spectrum where my status messages would only be roughly what I would say in a casual job interview;  Twitter merges the two in that social messages get through, so long as it isn’t very social.  I think of Twitter as an outlet where you can talk about things such as sports or other topics so long as it is kept in the level of a casual discussion with the person in the cubicle next to you.

With all of that being said, we’re back to our original question “Where does Google Buzz fit in?”  Let’s examine how Buzz is unique from LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook:

• Integrates directly into GMail
• Integrates into Google Maps so you can see where Buzzes are coming from
• It will automatically rank buzzes based on what it thinks it knows about you and what you like

And how Buzz is similar to some but different than others:

• Can post pictures directly into your status updates like Facebook, but not Twitter
• Status interface is bare-bones simple like Twitter, but not Facebook
• Automatic suggestions as to who you might want to follow like Facebook, but not Twitter (albeit in a different way.  Facebook cares more about you actually knowing the person, while Buzz heavily weighs actual content)

This is purely subjective, but it appears the best fit would be somewhere between Twitter and Facebook.  While you could squeeze a professional use in there, the plan is for your buzzes to be found based on your content, not your name.  There is no character limit that I’m aware of, but I don’t think they had blog-sized posts in mind.  You’re initially connected with your GMail friends (which for me is a small subset of my Facebook connection list), so this starts out with the intimacy of your closer friends but over time spreads to Twitter’s (I’ve-never-met-you-but-like-what-you-say) level of publicity.  With our initial question answered, it begs an even more difficult question:

How Do I Avoid Repeat-Fatigue?

Much with the overlap in the graphic above, I have a similar overlap when it comes to contacts.  Because of this, one thing I try to avoid is repeating amongst multiple feeds when not necessary.  When someone is already taking a surprisingly large chunk out of their day to checking Twitter and Facebook feeds, they certainly don’t need to be bombarded with repeat messages.  Adding Google Buzz into the mix makes this task even more daunting.  Buzz’s unique methods of finding people with similar interests makes it a bad idea to not publish the same ideas as twitter, but keeping the two perfectly in sync will duplicate your messages to your friends and followers.  I am not sure of the correct answer to this; I think it is just something that will have to be determined over time, much like social networking itself.