Google has just launched Buzz, a new feature that integrates with Gmail to allow you to share Twitter-like messages, photos and videos as well as hold conversations with your friends. In essence, Buzz is a social sharing layer that’s seamlessly integrated with email. You can learn more about the product on Google’s blog.

What’s interesting about Google Buzz is not the product per se, but Google’s ability to get these messages in front of a ton of eyeballs in a location-aware context, tying them to nearby businesses. Buzz has heavy mobile integration, spanning Google’s mobile homepage, Maps, Place Pages and Google’s mobile app. Here’s a video demo:

It’s easy to compare this with Facebook and Twitter, both of which, especially Facebook, have tremendous scale. But Google Buzz is ahead of the curve on the local front, both with massive distribution in a local context and an emphasis on tying messages to places. “When adding location to buzz posts, we focused on places, not just a lat/long location or an address,” explains Punit Singh Soni, Product Manager, Google Mobile. “We wanted to make location information more useful both to your followers and to help others discover information about nearby places.” Here’s a screen grab of messages tied to places, and the Buzz layer implementation on Google Maps.

I think this makes Buzz a valuable addition to Google’s toolbox as it continues to push aggressively into the local mobile advertising space. Empowering local businesses to self-publish to people around them, with massive Google Mobile distribution, can be a powerful value proposition, especially if Google ties it to recommendations and its Local Business Center. But in the end, will enough people and businesses publish on it, especially given the other social options out there? We’ll wait and see…

Microsoft’s reaction: “Busy people don’t want another social network”

Earlier today: Google Maps now making nearby business recommendations

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