Yahoo officially jumped into the social news game today with the roll out of
Yahoo Buzz. The site works similar to Digg and Reddit: Users "Buzz up" news stories they like, and depending on how many Buzz points the story gets, it could land on the front page of the site. The stories that receive the most Buzz points will also be submitted to Yahoo editors for possible inclusion on the Yahoo homepage. Users can simultaneously submit stories to Yahoo Buzz along with other sites including Digg, Facebook, Propeller, Reddit and Stumbleupon. [Full disclosure: Wired.com is one of the 100 publishers participating in the beta phase of Yahoo Buzz. Wired is also owned by Conde Nast, which operates Reddit, a potential competitor to Yahoo Buzz. ]
The story pickings on Yahoo Buzz are decidedly slim at the moment -- the top ten pieces include a couple stories about Barack Obama, a news story about a bird flu fatality, and something about how Ellen Degeneres appeared via satellite at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser (yawn). By contrast, the front page of Digg has a story about post-apocalyptic survival vehicles, left-handed presidents and something about how Burmese pythons could colonize one-third of the U.S. as a result of climate change (exciting!).
Still, Yahoo has scale on its side, with a user base of more than 500 million. Even if its story selection is limited now, it's bound to expand if even a small percentage of users catch on to Yahoo Buzz. The key question is whether social news will do anything for Yahoo that the company doesn't already have. Yahoo hasn't lacked in content or pageviews in recent years. It's consistently one of the top three highest trafficked or visited properties online. What it does lack, though, is an advertising platform that it can use to monetize that traffic. And to Yahoo's detriment, that's an area where Google has excelled.
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