Yes, it’s official.. Google stepping up in the social market once again.  First they introduced Google Wave

“Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”

And now Google Buzz, a service which can be fully functioned within your gmail account. Once you log in, you’ll see it’s tab right under the inbox tab. It’s (at the moment) invite only & most of us won’t be able to access/see it in our accounts.

google buzz

The key features include

1. Auto-following
2. No Setup Needed
3. Photo Friends
4. Connects to sites you already use
5. See updates in real time
6. Rich, quick sharing experience
7. Public and private sharing
8. Inbox integration

According to Mashable;

It provides links to websites, content from around the web. Picasa, Twitter, Flickr and other sites are aggregated, shows thumbnails when linked to photos from sites like Picasa and Flickr. Clicking on an image will blow up the images to nearly the entire browser, making them simpler to see, uses the same keyboard shortcuts as Gmail. This makes sense. Hitting “R” allows you to comment/answer to a buzz post, for example. There are public and private settings for different posts. You can post updates to specific contact groups. This is a lot like Facebook friend lists.

Another awesome feature which twitter users usually confront is that the comments are updated in real time. Right now, I can’t seem to access it but am keenly looking forward to it.

Via – Google Blog