The End of Google Buzz?

A couple of days ago I read that Google were venturing into the world of social networking with their "Buzz" facility which bring social networking to gmail, and my reaction was "What a pain." I already have facebook and my.opera. I have friends who use Twitter and others who use myspace. I have MSN, ICQ and Yahoo accounts for chat. (Actually on that issue, I highly commend Pidgin which brings together all forms of chat, including facebook chat into one little app- brilliant).

We don't need Google in that space generating the same thing as everyone else.

But this morning I read this article. The idea is that all of these sites should be able to interact with each other in real time, something like the way that my.opera tries to connect with facebook and twitter (which hasn't been working for me now for aobut three months).

If you look at the video on the article it shows how someone on one social networking site could chat, share photos etc with friends on any social network site that follows the agreed standards. In that case it is just a matter of joining up with a site that offers the features you want e.g. you could be on flickr or facebook but not have to be on both to share with friends.

If you have the tech smarts and the resources you can set up your own server and create your own open networking site.

I think this is a far more important development than what Google is doing. It just shows the power and opportunity of open standards in the technology world. I hope that the big players realise the power of "One Social Web" and start working on implementing it soon.