Yahoo Building Buzz with Buzz - Some Random Observations

Anything on Yahoo Buzz seems to start with a base Buzz Score of 100. It can go up or down from there. A recent political story at the top of Yahoo Buzz boasted a Buzz Score of 534. The lowest Buzz Score I could find was a 50, for a story about a Christian blogger claiming that Oprah promotes paganism. For the heck of it, I voted that one down – and was surprised to see Yahoo make a recommendation:

No, it doesn’t look as if it’s based on any kind of preference engine beyond showing me the top articles in the same category. That’s okay, but it would be very cool if Yahoo built some kind of system that said “Those who cared enough to vote on this story also cared enough to vote on these” and presented you with appropriate options. Then again, preference engines are really tricky to build and improve, as the competitors in a NetFlix challenge to improve its preference engine are discovering.

If you’re a publisher and you’d like to get exposure on Yahoo Buzz, the good news is you probably can – but it will take time. Yahoo Buzz is still in beta, but you can join their mailing list for updates; they’re promising new tools, APIs, and more very soon. Point your browser here to sign up.

I really like Yahoo Buzz on a lot of levels. Its Buzz Score may be less susceptible to manipulation than the voting systems you find on other social news networks. It could benefit a lot of publishers and advertisers. The user experience is fairly smooth, if potentially a little frustrating ("where did the image for that story I wanted to read go?!"). There is one thing that this kind of site usually has that Yahoo Buzz doesn’t, which I miss: beyond voting, there doesn’t seem to be a way for users to comment on each story, producing a thread. Perhaps Yahoo will add that later; after all, this service is still in beta.

In any case, it’s nice to see that Yahoo isn’t slowing down even with the threat of a hostile takeover bid from Microsoft hovering over its head. It’s a pity that this will probably be too little, too late. I’d rather not think about what Yahoo Buzz will become if and when Microsoft succeeds in its attempt to purchase the search engine.