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AT&T Arrives Late to the Location-Based Party With Buzz.com

by Terrence O'Brien on April 21, 2010 at 10:04 AM

AT&T Arrives Late to the Location-Based Party With Buzz.com
AT&T's Buzz (not to be confused with Google Buzz or Yahoo! Buzz) was officially launched today, after getting its initial teaser announcement in January. Buzz.com (as we'll be calling it to differentiate it from the other Buzzes) attempts to leverage AT&T's vast Yellow Pages database, subscriber pool, and large wireless network in order to create a money-making, location-based, social search tool similar to Yelp or the recently renamed Google Places.

The service, with which you can now register using Facebook Connect, pulls in recommendations and brief comments from your friends about businesses near you. In a sense, Buzz.com seems to be something more like Citysearch than Yelp, offering not only restaurant reviews, but also recommendations for businesses -- including dentists (as noted in the eye-roll-worthy video below).

AT&T enjoys several advantages that give Buzz.com a leg up on some competitors, but it seems to be a bit late to be joining location-based party. Maybe Buzz.com will surprise us and turn into a major hit, but it's hard to see room for more competitors in a market already crowded with the likes of Gowalla, Foursquare, Google, Yelp, Citysearch and Yahoo!, as well as -- soon enough -- Facebook and Twitter. [From: Mashable]

Tags: att, buzz, buzz.com, location based, LocationBased, socialsearch, top, web

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