If you use Gmail and make use of the new Google Buzz facility, you may be finding more content from your social circle than you anticipated.

Google Buzz is another Google application (not of their own invention I might add.. but when do Google drill something out that we haven’t seen before?) which helps you connect with people you know. It’s a similar format for when you post things on Twitter or “What are you thinking” section in Facebook.

You can also connect other social networking accounts to Google Buzz. So, for example, if you post something in Twitter, it can then show in your Google Buzz section of Gmail.

Ok, the reason for this post was that I was making a search on Google for something or other, and at the bottom of the results I saw a something from one of the people I was connected to via Google Buzz! Where the eck did that come from?

(It’s a bit squashed and the identity is protected.. ALOT)

So seeing the result, I wanted to find out more… Google says:

This is the network of connections Google uses to identify relevant social search results. It is based on a combination of the following:

* Direct connections from your Google chat buddies and contacts (5)
* Direct connections from links listed on your Google profile (0) such as Twitter and FriendFeed
* Secondary connections (253) that are publicly associated with your direct connections

In addition to web pages from your social circle, posts from your Google Reader subscriptions may also appear in your social search results.

This is a recent snapshot of your social circle. Changes you make to your connections will be reflected in the next snapshot

Wow! They are intigrating everything!

I guess if you didn’t want all these results, you could at least sign out of your Google account, this then removes your social circle from the Google results.

I like it in the sense that you can keep up to date with people in your social circle and pick their brains on information your after, but not so sure in another way because it may just be manipulating where I search for information.

The reason I say this is because I’m such a nosy person, and if I suddenly see a page from a friend, I’m very likely to ignor the other results and see what my friend had to say, this then means I will probably go on to look at the rest of their site and forget what I was searching for in the first place!

I guess you can’t really call it monopolizing, because I did go to Google for the first place, and… at least it doesn’t cost me anything.