Update: Gmail gets social with Google Buzz

Google has given Gmail a social networking component with its introduction of Buzz, a service built inside of the Web mail product that lets users post and share content in similar ways as they do in sites like Facebook and Twitter.

How successful Google will be in convincing Gmail users to shift their social networking tasks over to Buzz remains to be seen. Google believes Buzz offers enough improvements over existing social networks.

Specifically, Buzz has been designed to help users deal with the often massive amount of information they receive through their social-networking sites.

"Increasingly, it's becoming harder and harder to make sense and find the signal in the noise," said Bradley Horowitz, a Google vice president of product management, at a press conference on Tuesday.

The problem is only going to get worse, as people continue to find value in and embrace social media, he said. "We all feel this bombardment, this fatigue of having to go manually through and try to make sense of the torrent of information that's washing over us," he said. "This has become a large-scale problem, the kind we're good at [solving at] Google."

However, as Google officials acknowledged, Buzz right now has no links into Facebook, the world's largest social-networking site with more than 400 million members. This means that Buzz, at least for the moment, exists in parallel with Facebook, without the two of them intersecting, thus offering no help for users of that site, a major gap in Buzz's coverage.

As for Twitter, users can't post to Twitter from Buzz right now, but they can direct their Twitter posts to Buzz, as well as other content they post on public sites, like the Flickr and Picasa photo sharing sites from Yahoo and Google, respectively.

Google opted to build Buzz into Gmail because Gmail contacts lists are an underlying, existing social graph for users, officials said.

"Today, with Google Buzz, we're introducing a new way to share and communicate inside of Gmail. Buzz is like an entirely new world inside of Gmail," said Todd Jackson, Google Buzz product manager.

source: http://www.computerworld.com/

Open-source acquisitions: What's the holdup?

Trying to figure out a company's acquisition strategy is often complex. Some companies have very purposeful approaches to scoping out companies, products, and market segments, while others' approaches are much more scattershot.

Acquisitions of open-source companies have been a big topic of conversation ever since Red Hat acquired JBoss in April 2006. Many of us in the software industry thought that one or two large companies would snap up and consolidate several open-source companies in attempt to offer a complete open-source stack. But an open-source consolidator has yet to materialize.

In recent conversations with a number of open-source executives, it's come to light that many potential acquirers are less attracted to open-source companies that require more investment before generating revenue.

Considering that there are few private open-source companies generating beyond $15 million in annual revenue, an acquisition of an open-source company could certainly be tough for a public company to explain to Wall Street.

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The future of open source

There's no question that the open source community is a passionate one -- and one with significant influence on technology directions and options. We're way past the days when people asked if Linux or Apache was safe to depend on in business. Open source is now a mainstream part of the technology fabric.

Yet it remains connected to its roots around a passionate community working together to solve problems and share the fruits of their labors with others. Any endeavor based in community is bound to spark passionate debate. After all, without contention, how else to determine the best way forward?

Since its emergence, open source has embodied this spirit. Part defiant, part self-reliant, and often outspoken and opinionated, those immersed in the community have worked both in tandem and at odds, all with the intention of pushing the movement in as many worthwhile directions at once.

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