Online information overload is one of my favourite little themes that I keep returning to. As we consume more and more content on the web (social and otherwise), it becomes harder and harder to stay on top of all the updates, tweets, news articles, emails etc. that come our way every single day.

Efficient aggregation of all this content therefore becomes extremely important. And the company that can become the social media dashboard or destination – allowing us to integrate and aggregate everything in manageable place – will go some way to taking the online crown.

There have been some major developments this week that I feel firmly positions Google and Facebook at loggerheads in this social aggreation war.

Facebook threatens new email client – Facebook 1 v 0 Google

As the biggest social network, Facebook is ideally placed to win this battle. It’s 400m users are very loyal and use the service on a regular basis. But Facebook is keen to increase this loyalty and one of the key tasks that would likely take Facebookers to another website is email.

Facebook’s messaging service is frequently utilised by its users, but isn’t a fully blown email client. The rumours this week are that Facebook is working on an email client that would give it a key foothold in this area.

Google rolls out Google Buzz – Facebook 1 v 0.5 Google [jury’s still out]

Then yesterday, Google rolled out Google Buzz – a new social network/updater/integrator service that sits within Gmail. I blogged a few thoughts about Google Buzz last night and I remain unconvinced – it’s great if Gmail is your thing, but that only really accounts for the 140m Gmail users.

It’s still a fascinating move though by Google. And for me, it shows that the fight is on.

Facebook hits back with IM integration – Facebook 2 v 0.5 Google

And then today, just as the excitement around Google Buzz was dying down in the cold light of another day, Facebook hits back with the news that it is going to open up its internal chat to external developers.

Things move very quickly in social media and this week has brought this home very clearly.  I don’t think this is a ‘winner takes all’ situation, but there will be winners and losers and, so far I give Facebook the upper hand.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring…

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