Web Moves Blog

If you haven’t heard of it already, Yahoo! is going head-to-head with Digg via its new service called Yahoo! Buzz. While it has been active for a few months now, Buzz was confined to only a few select publishers for testing. Now, Yahoo! has opened it up to the public, so anyone from the online news giants to small niche blogs can participate. But, you may ask, with many established players in this field, what’s Yahoo! Buzz got to offer?

Advantages (Or, Why you should give Yahoo! Buzz a try)

1. Yahoo! has a huge user base and it’s a single sign-in for all their services. So unlike Digg, there’s less barrier to entry for people to vote or submit stories.

2. The traffic potential is enormous. Not only do you get the chance to get into the Yahoo! Buzz start page, which by itself has already surpased Digg traffic, you can also get into Yahoo.com’s homepage. ReadWriteWeb reported 45,000 views after spending 3.5 hours on the coveted spot.

3. Also on the RWW report is the surprisingly high user engagement in terms of the number and quality of comments. Take this with a grain of salt, however, until a wider study has been conducted.

4. Digg has been having a lot of problems, and people looking for a viable alternative (gaming issues, censorship charges, publisher favoritism, etc).

5. While Digg caters more to the techie crowd, Yahoo! Buzz appears to be targeted to a wider general-interest audience. The viewership also includes a higher percentage of women.

6. It’s new, and therefore it’s easier to get into the front page. I’ve seen lots of stories with single-digit votes land on the Buzz homepage. Compare that to Digg where you seem to need hundreds upon hundreds. It won’t stay this way, though, so hurry and submit your stories now!

Challenges (Or, Why you should restrain yourself from jumping up and down)

1. People have been accustomed to Digg, StumbleUpon, and other players who have been in this game for a few years. The most active ones have built solid communities in those sites and are not likely to switch unless they see real value in Buzz.

2. As it gets more popular, Yahoo! Buzz will become the target of those who will want to game the site. However, with Yahoo!’s resources, I’d like to think they’ll be able to guard against those threats.

3. The lack of a community and user incentives in Yahoo! Buzz may slow down user adoption.

4. As of now, the site is focused on the US market only, so it’s not good for niche sites with localized content.

5. It has shallow category depth (one level only), unlike Digg or StumbleUpon where users can really target their stories.

6. Does it have the staying power after the novelty factor has faded? We’ll see the results in the next few months.

So, have you tried Yahoo! Buzz? What was your experience on the site?