New social media enhancements to the popular Web-based e-mail service aim to more closely integrate real-time interaction.

February 9, 2010

By David Needle:

Google continues looking for ways to capitalize on the booming interest in social media, and now after made moves to better integrate Twitter and other popular social sites into its core search offering, it’s now turning to improvements in Gmail.

The idea is that by enabling Gmail to embrace the same kind of social updates, shared photos, and group commenting popularized by sites like Facebook, users will reap new benefits from the popular online e-mail service. Datamation has Google’s pitch in detail.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google took the wraps off a significant update to its Gmail service with Buzz, a new service it says brings more efficiency and security to the sea of tweets and other real-time feeds in which it says users are drowning.

“There’s value there, but it’s increasingly harder and harder to find the signal in the noise,” Bradley Horowitz, a Google vice president of product management, said today during an event here at the Googleplex. “You used to be able to let the stream wash over you, but when you get up to 500 or 5,000 friends, it becomes very, very difficult.”

Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) solution is Buzz, a new feature in Gmail that’s also available in a mobile version and on Google’s mobile home page. While the service has just launched today, Google says it will take several days to reach the millions of Gmail users.

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