GOOGLE has launched a new social network in a bid to take on community giants Facebook and Twitter. Called Google Buzz, the new media tool allows users to share messages, web links, photos and videos with friends and colleagues directly within the popular email system Gmail. The new social networking features are also compatible with smartphones based on Googles Android operating system. By integrating Buzz directly into Gmail, Google hope to appeal to its existing pool of 176million users. In this way they can rapidly challenge the popular social networking sites Twitter and Facebook. 'Buzz is built right into Gmail, so theres nothing to set up - youre automatically following the people you email and chat with the most, Googles Edward Ho said on the official blog. Each time a user posts a message, photo or link they can choose to share it publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends. Responses are sent to the users inbox, but Mr Ho was keen to point out that 'unlike static email messages, buzz messages in your inbox are live conversations where comments appear in real time. Buzz technology has also been weaved into the mobile versions of its website and its online map products. Executives said users can easily share content from various Google online properties like photo-sharing service Picasa and video site YouTube. Content from Twitter can also be shared, but users can only see tweets within Buzz and cannot publish new messages to Twitters service. Buzz is unable to display messages that originated on Facebook, the worlds No. 1 social network with 400 million active users. 'The fact that Gmail did not connect and allow broadcasts out to Twitter and Facebook could be a real challenge to them, said social media analyst Augie Ray. Google has tried to ride the social networking wave before, launching the Orkut social network in 2004. But while Orkut is big in certain overseas markets like Brazil, it has failed to attract users in the UK and US Buzz will be rolled out to Gmail users over the next few days. Daily Mail