What Is It?

Buzz is Google’s status update and messaging service that is built into Gmail. It focuses on staying in touch with the people you email with frequently. As a result, you won’t have to rebuild your social network. Instead, you rely on your existing address book.

In addition, it has no limit on message length, allows threaded discussions, and supports rich media. By commenting on the statuses of others, people also subscribe to those threads via email.

Of course, such a service isn’t something new. However, Google has been able to launch Buzz with great success overnight because of the large installed base it had with Gmail. The numbers are quite staggering as well. Google said there were nine million messages in the first 56 hours and 200 mobile check-ins per minute, and this was even before most people had access to Buzz!

With Buzz, Google has combined both data (contacts) and behavior (social sharing).

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