Will Google Buzz’s New Re-share Feature Increase Its Worth in the Social Networking World?

Despite a few hiccups following the initial launch, Google Buzz continues to live on and treat the community of users to new features.  Over the past four months, Google has introduced a number of enhancements to improve the service and make it more useful.  The “Re-share” button is one of the latest functions the search king hopes will increase the value of its social networking tool. 

The Re-share feature is similar to the “re-tweet” button on Twitter and the “via” function on Facebook.  What it basically does is allow a Buzz user to re-post a piece content they find in their stream, and accredit it to the author who originally posted it.  So if one of your friends posts a review about the restaurant they ate at last night, you simply hit the Re-share button, and the post is published in your stream.   This feature is certainly a worthy addition as it capitalizes on the emerging trend of “re-sharing” that is becoming more commonly associated with the social web.  When considering that the Buzz platform is much better suited for reshuffling multimedia content than say, Twitter, this new feature could be something people find very useful. 

According to Todd Jackson, product manager for both Gmail and Buzz, the team has made it a priority to listen the user base and enhance the service by delivering an average of one new feature per week based on the feedback.  With this particular feature, the team put a special emphasis on development in order to avoid the criticism Twitter faced over its re-tweet.  Twitter opted not to allow comments to be added to a re-tweet, showing the original post as well as the author’s avatar to the re-tweeter’s followers whether or not they were following the original poster.  This resulted in complaints when users suddenly started noticing tweets from random people in their streams.  The Buzz team showed that it has taken note of this by allowing users to post comments with the Re-share feature, and more importantly, making it clear they are re-posting it by providing a link to the original post. 

Google Buzz was rolled out with much hype, initially hailed by some as potential competition for both Facebook and Twitter.  The hype fizzled out quickly due to privacy issues and while they were quickly addressed, the adoption has been slower than many expected.  The ability to re-share content is definitely a step in the right direction, but it will likely take far more than a single feature for Buzz to solidify its position in the social networking world.  And although some users are still trying to figure out how they could possibly use this service on top of all their other social networks, we shouldn’t count Google out just yet.  The weekly rollout of features and a new API shows that the search giant is quite serious about bringing the developer community onboard and making the most of its social innovation.