• Oreilly.com et al., Wednesday, February 10, 2010 2:08 PM

A day after Google debuted Buzz -- integrating a slew of social and local features into Gmail -- early reviews and analysis continue to roll in.

On the news, The Times concludes that Google and Facebook are on nothing less than a "collision course in the increasingly competitive market for social networking services."

Rather than a "me too" social media product, blogger Tim O'Reilly believes that Google "has taken the social media lessons of Twitter and applied them to their own core products."

"At the high level, this is a strong move for Google," writes blogger Jeremiah Owyang. "They continue to aggregate other people's social content, and become the intermediary ... This helps them to suck in Twitter, Flickr, and any-other-data type as the APIs open up, giving them more to 'organize'."

Meanwhile, "Yahoo has got to be fuming, if it has any more fumes left, that is," snipes Federated Media's John Battelle.

In his opinion, initial industry response was "somewhat positive -- mainly due to the huge installed base that Gmail brings to the party." Yet, he questions Buzz's long-term viability because, for one, it doesn't "publish out" to Twitter or Facebook -- which therefore requires users to build a distribution network from scratch.

"Integration with existing social networks are critical for Buzz's success -- especially Facebook," seconds Mashable. "I don't believe Buzz can enjoy significant success without Facebook integration."

According to ReadWriteWeb: "Google Buzz seems to involve an asymmetric follower/friend model, but we're not completely sure how friendships and shared posts will work." Needless to say, the fact that the experts at ReadWriteWeb are confused by Buzz doesn't bode well for its broader adoption.

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