Digg's decision in April to add the controversial "DiggBar" doesn't seem to have hurt their traffic, which has steadily gained ground all year. The DiggBar was met with an outcry from many writers in the blogosphere who accused Digg of attempting to "steal" their traffic. But Digg traffic has almost doubled in the last year, going from 22 million unique U.S. visitors a year ago to 43 million uniques at the end of August according to Compete.com.
And while Yahoo Buzz has been around for over a year and a half now, it has failed to take anything away from Digg's lead in the social news department. In fact, Yahoo Buzz ranks just above Reddit, garnering only 6 million unique visitors in August, which is up from 4.5 million last year.
Does this make Yahoo Buzz a bust? While Yahoo Buzz was meant to add social aspects to Yahoo more than to compete with Digg, the similarities between the sites are unmistakable, and no doubt Yahoo hoped Yahoo Buzz's traffic would be one of those similarities.
Instead, Yahoo Buzz has gained the reputation of having a decidedly conservative userbase, a reputation that certainly seems to hold water when comparing some of the comments on the announcement of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. The telling feature of these comments are the number of votes anti-Peace-Prize comments get compared to the number of negative votes the few pro-Peace-Prize comments garnered.
What do you think? Is it the conservative nature of the users that have kept Yahoo Buzz from taking off, or is it that Digg simply does a better job of presenting social news?
That’s an interesting discovery. I think Yahoo!Buzz’s conservative bend should be leveraged to its full advantage. If more conservatives were aware of it as an alternative to Digg, I think it could do really well.
I signed up to Buzz to hopefully get an objective concensus of what the general opinion of the public is on issues. Much to my dismay I find Buzz to be a sleezy Right wing Conservitive hangout being, used as an an extension to propagate the voice of the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, and others of the consevitive media who willfully contort, make up false issues and maliciously twist anything positive into an issue of negativism. Since the conservitives can not do their own thinking and are dependent and told what to think and say by the afore mentioned simpletons, as observed in most posts, Buzz would be the place for them to congregate. Since there is suppose to be safety in numbers, Buzz is the place loosers need.
Hey, there you go Lauren… as your Commander and Chief so greatly said, “You Have To Keep Repeating Things To Catapult The Propaganda”
Yahoo Buzz is wonderful for the Right-Wing Drive-by lies, because they are not forced to have to come back and debate any of the facts that are shot back at them like on Digg.
Whenever you go on Yahoo Buz now, you will be able to narrow down all the logical comments by just looking for the red thumbs down mark
Don’t be deceived by the folks on that site. It may look like right wingers are blogging in mass on Yahoo! Buzz, but in reality, you have one – maximum two paid bloggers- using multiple email accounts (10-20!) with different user names to give that impression. These bloggers are paid per blog by various CONServative organizations and have a large catalog of canned talking points and replies that they are adept at cutting and pasting onto the Buzz forums. They work in shifts and blog around the clock. If you read the blogs enough you’ll soon recognize the same old people, their style of writing and the same tired talking points and/or insults.
Yahoo buzz is full of proud racist bigots. Things like “facts” will not get through their hypocitical agenda. It’ll be dead by next year cuz noone actually goes there like the above poster said. How are you going to support slogans like “Kill all muslims” from a site like yahoo buzz?? EVEN right-wingers HAVE TO ADMIT their movement is racists calling for the extinction of the middle east.
Typical pro-war racist – “We gave the Iraqi people democracy!” – turns around to friend – ” Fukin all muslims should be wiped off this earth kill them all!”
You hit the nail on the head with this article.
I was on Yahoo Buzz and I’m of the Moderate-Progressive variety.
Some of the posts were extremely obnoxious if not downright racist. The “kill that N****r Obama” or “shoot all those **** Mexicans-Arizona has the right idear” seemed to permeate throughout that place.
I got fed up when I called them what they really were: a bunch of ignorant, uneducated, right wing racists. Someone then reported me to Yahoo and I got banned–LOL!!! For “violating Buzz’s ‘community standards” LOL!!!
Oh the irony. You can defame the President, insult an entire race of people, but the moment you call these hypocrites at their game, they go crying to Yahoo and get you banned.
I’m with Digg now and never been happier or felt more enlightened.