Google Buzz now lets you share private Picasa Web Albums privately. When you create a private album, the people you choose to share with will see a notification in Google Buzz.
"It used to be all or nothing when it came to sharing a new Picasa Web Album in Buzz," says Jonathan Sposato of Google’s Photos Team. "If you created a public album in Picasa Web Albums, it created a public Google Buzz post. That was great for when you wanted to share your photos broadly. But for those times when you wanted to share with a smaller circle — no Buzz."
Now that’s changed.
"Just make sure you have Picasa Web Album as one of your connected sites in Buzz to take advantage of this easy way to share your albums," he says.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt made comments this week at the company’s Zeitgeist event, indicating that Google would be adding more social layers to more of its core products. He may not have specifically had this feature in mind, but it still has to be considered an example of this philosophy, and of the further integration among Google products that turns Google itself into that much more of a full featured social network.