Yahoo launches Digg clone with a twist
Cory Bergman February 26th, 2008
Yahoo Buzz debuted in beta overnight, and at first glance it looks and behaves exactly like Digg. Vote stories up and the most-buzzed appear on Yahoo’s home page. But there’s one big difference: you can’t submit a story. Explains Wired’s Scott Gilbertson: “Buzz aggregates stories from select publishers and then users can vote them up or down. While that means Buzz will lack the variety of sources that you’ll find on Digg, it also handily eliminates a good bit of spam and the pointless link bait articles that clutter up the Digg homepage.”
So who are these select publishers, and how do we get on the list? After scanning the stories, you’ll see mainstream publishers like Washington Post, bigger independent sites like Huffington Post as well as the occasional Wordpress blog. Interestingly, Yahoo says smaller sites will probably not make the Yahoo home page because of the “Digg effect” (their sites will crash). Publishers who want to get on the list are told Yahoo Buzz will “be accepting more publishers soon” and to sign up for an email.
I think Yahoo Buzz is an interesting idea, especially since it combines search popularity with voting to create that Buzz score. The tech-savvy folks, though, will stick with Digg. Yet the massive reach of Yahoo will pull in mainstream users who might think this is all that and a slice of bread. But the big question is, why didn’t Yahoo do this sooner?
4 Comments Add your own
1. Rick Ellis | February 26th, 2008 at 11:33 am
It’s a fine line between not wanting to include too many sites, and not offering enough breadth. One of the great things about Digg is that you run across stories that are bubbling under the radar. And I don’t see that on Buzz yet.
I just glanced at the entertainment index of stories, and everything on that section’s front page is drawn either from Yahoo News or one of the “Sugar” group of sites “Pop Sugar, GiggleSugar, BuzzSugar.”
That’s just not a wide-enough pool of stories, and there wasn’t anything there that made me think “Wow, I hadn’t seen that one.”
Even Fark’s Showbiz section manages to do that (assuming you work your way through the mentions of Star Trek and celebrity breasts).
2. Chris krewson | February 26th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Several of these sites are in the Yahoo! newspaper consortium — like my employer, the Philly Inquirer.
3. Miracle Blade | February 26th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Great! As if there weren’t enough Digg clones around already.
4. Jeremiah | March 2nd, 2008 at 6:08 pm
This seems to be little more than slick marketing with heavy tracking of stories. Yahoo’s going to be in the business of helping PR and ad firms create highly targeted content by analyzing what kind of stories (and phrasings) get the most attention.
Corporate linkbait, if you will.
It’s only a Digg clone if you know/care about Digg, which the *vast* majority of internet users do not.
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