Yahoo Buzz is Yahoo's version of social news. Yahoo users can vote for stories from across the web and boost their buzz rating. And if a story gets a high enough buzz rating, it will be featured on Yahoo's home page, which could translate to millions of page hits for the website publishing the story.
The stories are arranged by category and originate from publishing partnerships with Yahoo. Content publishers will contact Yahoo requesting that their content appear in Yahoo Buzz, and if approved, their stories will be thrown into the mix.
So, What Is Yahoo Buzz? What makes Yahoo Buzz Different From Other Social News Sites?
Yahoo Buzz differentiates itself from sites like Digg and Propeller by including factors other than just votes into the buzz rating of the articles. The buzz rating also takes into account popular search phrases used on Yahoo and the number of times the article is sent to a friend through email.
In some ways, this fixes a flaw in the open voting systems used by social news sites. The flaw of open voting is that groups of people working together can influence the system. By adding other factors into the equation besides voting, Yahoo Buzz limits the ability for these groups to control what is popular and what is not popular.
Is Voting the Only Difference Between Yahoo Buzz and Other Social News Sites?
No. A very key difference is that Yahoo Buzz is not an open system. Users cannot submit their own stories to Yahoo Buzz, they can only vote for the stories provided by Yahoo Buzz. This means that stories only appear from publishers approved by Yahoo.
This can be good because it eliminates some of the fluff that gets posted on other social news sites that really doesn't belong there or add anything new. But, it also means that Yahoo Buzz will not contain any cool stories that don't come from the content publishers they are working with.
Does Yahoo Buzz Compete With These Social News Sites?
In asking what is Yahoo Buzz, social news immediately comes to mind. There are many similarities like voting on articles and sharing them with friends.
But is it social news? Certainly, it is not the same social news that we are used to seeing. There is no ability to comment on the articles. Yahoo may add this ability in the feature, but discussing popular items is a key point driving social news.
Social news is also driven by the idea that the best of the web is being mined by the users. With Yahoo Buzz, more than just user votes goes into the buzz factor, so the stories aren't being mined completely by user voting. The stories are also limited by those publishers Yahoo is working with, so it is not so much a best of the web as it is a best of the selected few.
In fact, Yahoo Buzz includes the ability to send any story to sites like Digg, Propeller and StumbleUpon, so it is clear that Yahoo does not consider these sites competitors.
So, What is Yahoo Buzz If Not Social News?
While Yahoo Buzz certainly has aspects of social news, it differentiates itself by the way it creates the buzz factor and the way it collects the stories. In this way, it is more like "social Yahoo" than "social news."
But that's a good thing. We already have Digg. We already have Newsvine. Do we need another?
Yahoo Buzz does not compete with other social news sites. Rather, it adds to the Yahoo web portal by allowing users to interact with Yahoo and perhaps influence which stories get spotlighted on the main site.
Leave your own opinion on Yahoo Buzz.