Yahoo Building Buzz with Buzz - Building Some Buzz
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I’ll start with the blue square at the top labeled “Just Added.” Images in that square tend to shift and change every minute, which can be a little disconcerting if you were looking for a particular image and it’s not there anymore. Sometimes reloading helps. At least you don’t have to click the image to find out where it goes. Just put your mouse cursor over it, like so:
The tooltip tells you the article’s headline, where it came from, and how recently it was added. What happens if you click on the More link in the tooltip?
You get taken to the full entry in Yahoo Buzz for the story, sitting at the head of the story’s Yahoo Buzz category (Sci/Tech in this case). From here you can click through to read the article, vote on the story by “buzzing it” up or down, email it to someone, or post it to one of six different social sites: Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Propeller, Reddit and Stumbleupon. Yes, that’s right, Yahoo’s version of a social news site plays well with other social sites – including ones that Yahoo doesn’t own.
As with many other social sites, you can’t vote anonymously. Here’s a screen shot of what happens if you try to vote without registering or being logged into the system:
Did I mention that I really like Yahoo’s use of tooltips in Buzz? Anyway, if I’m going to get the word out about this story, I’d better register. I already have a Yahoo sign-in – and in fact, I’m already signed in with it. But apparently I still need to register with Buzz.
Or do I? As it turned out, all I had to do was sign in with my password with my regular screen name, go back to Buzz, find the story again, and I got a new tooltip that let me confirm my vote. I didn't need to create a separate registration for Buzz. Here’s what it looked like after I voted:
Yahoo made it fairly easy to search for this article. I could choose to search in the specific category and/or search by title only for my particular keyword. It’s pretty clear how Yahoo will monetize this new service, by the way: after I did my search, about five text ads came up on the right, all featuring my keyword. This is no surprise; Yahoo’s been in the business of combining search with text ads on the side for a long time. But this particular service combines search, text ads and the dynamic of a vote-based web site in an effective manner.
Next: Some Random Observations >>
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