Google Inc. has announced it will close down social networking site Google Buzz in the next few weeks to concentrate on building up its successor Google+.

Google Buzz users will no longer be able to create new posts after Google Buzz is closed but Bradley Horowitz, Google's vice president of product, said they can still view existing content through their Google Profile and download it through Google Takeout, according to Softpedia.com.

"We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+," Computerworld quoted Horowitz as saying.

Launched last year to compete against Facebook and Twitter, Google Buzz became a flop due to design flaws and weak privacy settings. It drew complaints because Gmail users were automatically enrolled in the Buzz and that led to a sanction from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Google Buzz's social networking, microblogging and messaging functions are linked to the Gmail. Programs integrated into the platform include Picasa, Flickr, Google Latitude, Google Reader, Google Sidewiki, YouTube, Blogger, FriendFeed, identi.ca and Twitter. A mobile version allows users to see other nearby users through Google Maps.

In contrast, Google+ has a function to group contacts, video chat and others available in Facebook, which is used by 500 million subscribers worldwide.