Yahoo! Buzz Follows Ask’s Social News Formula

(Source) But the “select publishers” are not just mainstream media outlets, there’s also a good bit of content pulled from smaller sites like Make Magazine and WordPress blogs. Overall Buzz strikes a good balance between the big news sites and smaller sources.

Does this mean that bloggers will be allowed to submit stories to Yahoo! Buzz? I’m not sure if that is what it is saying or not. It does appear to be saying that Yahoo! will allow certain publishers that are not mainstream big news outlets submit their stories, but what will be the criteria for becoming one of those “select publishers?” That’s the question of the day.

This article does provide a good overview of the social news phenomenon. Propeller has achieved some moderate success, but nothing quite like Digg. Wired is certainly right about that. But Ask.com has also launched its own social news site, though it is still too new to know whether it will compete well with Digg and other sites. Yahoo! is more along the lines of Ask’s BigNews than anything else. It may be fun to vote up stories, but if I don’t get any benefit out of it as a webmaster then I don’t really have the time to kill. Good luck to Yahoo! Buzz.