Google Buzz allows users to share personal updates, photos and videos. Anyone using the existing email service, Gmail, will automatically be able to use the service, meaning the network already has hundreds of millions of people.

Whilst a bold move on Google’s part, the industry reaction seems to be that it will never be able to compete with the likes of Twitter and Facebook as it doesn’t offer anything over and above the existing capabilities of these platforms.

One major concern that has been raised is around the privacy of the service. In order to quickly populate your list of friends, Buzz automatically follows other Buzz users that you frequently communicate with through Google’s other services such as GMail and Google Talk. While this automatically gives you a populated list of people to follow and allows your most common contacts to see your status update, it also makes your Buzz friends list public by default.

But being so new only time will tell whether Google Buzz will really take off.

If you’re signed up and are loving/hating the service let us know your thoughts.

Teaming up with Glamour Magazine’s UK Twitter feed, we gave away some Barry M make-up goodies, along with a free annual subscription to the NoPostie service. All users had to do was visit the website and tweet their answer to the question.

Witha  substantial amount of entries just in one afternoon, do you think Twitter competitions are the way forward?

Termed ‘social recruiting’, this cost-effective and efficient method is proving a hit with employers as not only does it help source quality candidates, it also improves brand visibility for the employer.

But what if you’re the one looking for the job? Your presence on social networks can boost your career and enhance your prospects of finding a job, but beware when using them for personal reasons. Companies are increasingly using social networks to investigate applicants before they hire them, so make sure any of your previous posts don’t come back to haunt you!

The key to making it work for you is to ensure you build up your own social network, even when you’re not actively looking for a job, as you never know when you might need to tap into your contacts.

In order to spread the word to the masses about the blog, we brokered a partnership with Grazia offering their Twitter followers the chance to win a £100 TopShop gift card every day for five days – all they had to do was visit the blog and answer the daily question! Hundreds of entries ensued and traffic to the blog increased twenty-fold!

Why not visit the blog yourself and leave a comment?

 This is a great way of filtering your Twitter feed as, if you’re anything like me, you’re following quite a variety of different tweeters. This is a nice way of categorising into vertical sectors and very important for anyone who likes to be organised!

 At the moment, the way you add and remove people from lists is a little time consuming, although I’m sure this will be streamlined in the future. Now all Twitter needs to improve is their search function!

The key to longevity is determining which apps offer long-term value to the user. These primarily include any news-based apps that are constantly updated and offer added value, whilst entertainment based apps tend to have shorter shelf lives due to their viral nature.

Whilst there will always be a place in the market for creative and entertaining apps, brands looking to extend the apps value over a longer period of time need to look at being useful and practical to today’s user in order to keep them coming back for more.  One example is a new app launched which lets you broadcast your London location to friends – turning your mobile into a city guide, loyalty store card and social connector.

So do you think this app has the staying power to hold its own for a long time? I say keep it fresh and relevant and you’ll keep the users coming back.

This is a fantastic example of how you can create a buzz on Twitter very simply and encourage other people to spread the word on your behalf.

Jack Johnson’s label clearly sees the value in using Twitter and may have based their decision on the back of the success of The Streets’ free Twitter downloads in April this year.

With a number of individual artists already present on Twitter, it makes perfect sense to tap into their current fan base and grow their following to a new audience.

This is a great development for the platform, with more and more music industry professionals realizing the potential for rewarding, engaging and growing the number of fans. I’ll be interested to see how this platform develops in the future and further integrates with the entertainment industry.

For those of you who haven’t jumped on the Spotify band wagon, the site basically allows you to listen and share millions of music tracks for free over the internet. You can build your own playlists and send them to your friends and as the service is paid for by advertising it means it’s free!

For anyone in the communications industry there are a wealth of opportunities available, not only in terms of simple advertising, but for partnership work and video seeding – check out an example of how Sky partnered with Spotify to stream updates from The Ashes.

With over two million people in the UK already using the service, what is next for the music sharing site? They did let us in on the news that they have developed an application for the iPhone which is still in the approvals process.

With that, and a rumoured Facebook app on the way, I’m interested to see how explosive this service is going to become over the next few months.

Facebook says: ‘Similar to the Facebook experience you get on your mobile phones, Facebook ‘Lite’ is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people’s Walls, and look at photos and status updates.

One of the big benefits of Facebook Lite is that it will be much faster and will be much more streamlined – a big help if you’re accessing Facebook from a country with low bandwidth.

I think this could be great way to encourage a younger audience to become even more engaged with micro-blogging and that both sites are significantly different that they can exist in the same space without competing.

Recently, a lot of people have criticised that Facebook has become cluttered with a deluge of games, quizzes and personality tests. It’s good to see Facebook listening to its customers and adapting to maintain its market share.

This development has certainly caused a stir in the social networking arena and I’m excited to learn more as this story continues…