Today Google announced its latest social application, designed to bring the fire hose of social media and status updates down to a useful trickle of the most “interesting” bits. Dubbed Google Buzz, the service is designed to offer easier ways to share links, photos, and other information, corral all those things shared by friends and other connections, and integrate well with other services in an open way.

It’s “a Google approach to sharing,” according to Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz.

While the rumor was that Buzz would be Google’s “Twitter-killer,” it would actually be missing the point to describe it that way. Buzz offers a way to share status updates, if you want to use it that way. It can also be used to share links, videos, photos, and more—in this regard, it’s more akin to Facebook posts or even quick-blogging services like Tumblr or Posterous. Buzz can also integrate with other social services to share any publicly accessible things you post to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, Blogger, and any service that offers an RSS feed.

Buzz also offers a way for anyone you’re connected to via your Google contacts to comment on the things you share, much like your friends can on Facebook. Further, it adopts the de facto standard of using “@replies” to send notices to specific users.

In addition, Buzz gives users control over how information is shared. Posts can be made public or private. You can create groups of contacts, such as “co-workers” and mark items as shared with only that group, multiple groups, or just a single contact.

Everything that is shared publicly is instantly indexed by Google search index, and Buzz streams and comments update in real time.

Google Buzz is being rolled out over the course of the next few days. Gmail users should see a notice when they log in once it has been activated on their account. We’ll be sure to share our thoughts once we have an opportunity to put it through its paces.

VIA: arstechnica.com