After a good deal of speculation and excitement on tech blogs, Google has unveiled Buzz, a new service that Gmail users to post short, Twitter-style status updates. This signals to many observers that Google is serious about beefing up the social networking arm of its business and is targetting Twitter, which already has as many as 20 million register users. But will Google Buzz be able to get traction against a competitor with such a big head start? (Watch a Google Buzz demo)
Google's tried social networking already — and failed: It's makes a lot of sense to integrate this sort of feature into Gmail, says Mark Milian in the Los Angeles Times. But Google "has already tried its hand unsuccessfully at social networking a few times before" — for example, Orkut, a "Facebook competitor," is completely "ignored by Americans" — and there's little reason to think this effort will fare better.
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