But will Google Buzz, the "Twitter-Killer", broadcast death?

News of Google's plan to announce the release of a new set of tools that will make Gmail more social permeated the blogosphere yesterday. The company held a press conference this morning to go over the new release of Google Buzz, and well before the name of the product was even announced Nicholas Carlson over at Silicon Alley Insider had already jumped on crowning it a "Twitter-Killer."

The result of the frenzy is the top seat on Techmeme, and prior to this morning's announcement of Google Buzz discussions ranged from the "Twitter-Killer" proclamation to Robert Scoble's take: "Why Google won't give Twitter or Facebook a buzz cut".

The details are out, but the question remains whether or not this will be a gamechanger for Google. The company has certainly had a rough go at the social space (Jaiku, Dodgeball, Orkut, and others come to mind). One thing struck me yesterday while I was reading the tech-fueled frenzy: the core of what makes social apps so interesting -- the humanity behind the application. Sure, sites like Twitter have become the butt of "I'm eating a sandwich" jokes, and justly so. But there is something to the steady stream of data from people's lives that, when arranged in the right ways, can really hook people in. Scoble has a point, in that the methods Facebook employs to make their app more sticky drive to the core of human interactions -- you want to stay on Facebook because your compelled to connect.

These apps have altered our way of communicating with one another, and whether you like it or not, the immediate nature of the lifestream is taking root across the country. This is no longer the stuff of the Silicon Valley social bubble, even niche products like Foursquare are expanding rapidly into the mainstream market. This stuff is here to stay, and it's going to impact us in ways we may not even yet realize.

Take for example this story posted by TravG73 yesterday about a family who learned about the death of their son via Facebook. It's a heartbreaking story, but not altogether surprising. Through the advent of social media and the changes it's made to our methods of communication, we now learn more about the people we know in a more immediate way -- layoffs, births, and even deaths. Not to trivialize the matter, but even health updates could be broadcast via sites like Twitter. In a hypothetical situation, you could receive automated status updates about a hospitalized loved one on the other side of the world via a private Twitter account while in transit to visit them. That doesn't necessarily sound like a bad thing to me.

Long before the death of MySpace, this trend had already become rooted in reality via a site called MyDeathSpace.com. At the height of MySpace's popularity, people scoured news articles for stories about tragic deaths, and then sleuthed their way to the deceased's MySpace profile. The site appears to be more tuned to celebrity analysis now, but the concept remains. Even Facebook has a plan for your profile after you've passed. Their idea memorializes your profile for loved ones to revisit and share stories about you even after you're not around.

As morbid as any of this may sound, it's rooted to the core of what makes these sites so popular -- the human connection. So as Google transforms Gmail to be more social, my questions remain:

How well will it handle the broadcasting of important life moments?

How connected will this new social app make me feel to the people in my circle?

What's your take? Have you experienced loss in the social media space? Has your online connection to people bolstered relationships, or is it a cheapened version of the real-life counterpart?

Let's discuss in the comments.