The power of social networking needs no second mention, and almost everyone has started looking at the web to remain updated about what's new, what's cool, and what's happening in the other parts of the world! Google News, MSN News, Digg, Newsgator and many more that I couldn't even list here have services that bring you the latest and most read stories so you don't have to take the trouble of actually surfing and searching. And looks like Yahoo, who's recently been in a lot of limelight, has joined this bandwagon too! Yahoo Buzz, their latest gig is an attempt to get more readers, and perhaps create more "buzz"!Yahoo has introduced Yahoo Buzz!, a service that lets you vote for user selected stories from around the web. It is very similar to digg which allows users to vote for there stories which should appear on the homepage. However, it ranks the stories based on votes, search-term popularity and what everyone is reading and emailing at this moment.
While browsing the web, yahoo users will be able to send message to Yahoo Buzz! about the content they like. Yahoo will then compute the information and publish it if they like. If your content is really buzzed, then it also has a chance of getting featured on the Yahoo homepage. It is currently in beta phase and includes content from around 100 publishers ranging from large online sites and small influential blogs. Similar to MSN News, but just something that focusses on blog stories to a larget extent. The participating publishers will also be given an online badge which will enable there readers to submit and vote for stories in real time.
Unlike Digg, Yahoo Buzz publishes only hand-selected stories, which means you can't publish unless they approve of your content. However, if you want to become a publisher, you can visit the Publishers section. I don’t think it can pose a very serious challenge to Digg unless it starts accepting user content from around the web and not from just a handful of blogs.
There is a lot of competition with similar concepts, and whether we really need one more is definitely questionable. Yet, if Yahoo expands on their current service, makes it more user-friendly and opens it up to a lot more bloggers, it could create some "buzz". But whether it succeeds or not, only time will tell!
