Google and Facebook race to seek best integration of email and social media

Google Buzz is less than a week old but the tech world has taken notice in a major way. Google has taken steps to integrate social media such as Twitter and Facebook into their popular Gmail web mail service.

Google Buzz prompts users with suggestions of which other users they want to follow, based on who they e-mail most. Google Buzz will connect to Google Reader and Picasa Web Albums, and public items can be shared via these connect options. Twitter and Flickr can be added manually to Google Buzz profile as well.

The new Buzz tab in Gmail Settings offers a chance to decide to show or exclude who you follow on your public Google profile and gives you the option to hide Buzz from Gmail. You can also disable Buzz completely.

By utilizing third-party gadgets, you can now transform your Gmail homepage into a place where you can access Twitter, Google Buzz, and Facebook from a single location.

You can now add any iGoogle gadget for example, you can add the "TwitterGadget", a fully-functional Twitter service for iGoogle and Gmail, which integrates tweets into the sidebar or will open up your Twitter with all of your tabs intact. The "Facebook Gadget" can be added in the same way. Apparently although Google has an official Facebook gadget, it doesn’t work well with Gmail, SUPRISE, SUPRISE, so third party apps like "Facebook Gadget by iBruno" are the way to go.

Facebook isn't resting on its laurels either. Everyone who is familiar with Facebook email knows that the system isn't ideal. Facebook messaging is only indirectly linked to email, the standard way that people exchange digital messages when not on Facebook. The people at Facebook are aware of their downsides too, and they're working on it. We might see a much more interesting Facebook messaging system soon.

According to this TechCrunch article,

Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product. Internally it’s known as Project Titan. Or, unofficially and perhaps over-enthusiastically, the Gmail killer.

It's still a little too early in this race to predict a winner, but Google and Facebook are clearly both doing their best to be the place we spend our time on line.