Is Yahoo! Buzz A True Social Media Site?
February 27th, 2008 by Amir Hirsh, PresidentI was thrilled to see the new release of Yahoo! Buzz go live (finally). Having such a huge player offering a news-voting experience to its members could prove itself to be a giant leap in opening the Web 2.0 to all, really ALL.
As much as we enjoy the ability to contribute to today’s top news online through Digg, StumbleUpon and our other exciting Web 2.0 sites, we can’t ignore the fact that most people are still ignorant to the power of their online vote.
Now, with Yahoo exposing online voting to its large member base, I believe we’ll start seeing more and more “regular” people participate in the conversation. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m glad. I warmly welcome the normal human beings into the arms of our geeky party. Welcome Yahoo!-ers.
Michael Arrington covered the launch in detail on TechCrunch. I agree with Michael that “Digg-like” is probably the closest definition we have for the new service. Still, looking closer at what is provided in Yahoo! Buzz, there are some significant differences between the two services. Some of those differences are related to the fundamentals of what I believe is the essence of social media: giving the power to the community.
For example, the new service doesn’t have any of Digg’s cherished networking capabilities: no friends, no shouts or any inside conversation with like-minded individuals… in a way - Yahoo! Buzz allows people to vote, but doesn’t encourage them to talk about it with their friends. Another difference is the editorial influence on what “makes it to the top” - only a few pre-approved individuals can contribute content to the site. Finally, the order of Yahoo! Buzz’s popularity list appears to not be based purely on user votes, but also takes into consideration some other mystic, hidden values (perhaps in that they are closer to Digg than I originally suggested…). All in all this weakens the ability of Average Joe to make his mark online.
Does that mean Yahoo! believes in a more controlled environment? I hope not. I think the real value of the service, and hence the chance of it to succeed, lies in empowering the users to take control, to contribute content, to vote up or down, to communicate with each other and let the conversation prosper. I hope this is a short rest stop for Yahoo! in their important work of bringing social media to their members.
In either case, I salute them for already taking a huge step forward.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I will have to throw my 2 cents here and somewhat disagree with the definition of “digg-like” web site. Yahoo Buzz seems very mature from the start and changing the angle so that social media mavens are powerless against true quality content. Which is very un-digg-like. I also believe that after the beta phase they will allow more and more publishers, perhaps after a process of evaluating their worthiness.
–Ted
May 19th, 2008 at 3:15 am
Thanks Ted for your comment.
I agree with you and it seems Yahoo!’s offering is proving itself to be a very mature service. The exciting latest news about it being the impressive level of activity their readers are showing too (see ReadWriteWeb’s Yahoo.com Sends a Ton of Talkative Traffic).
I hope you’re right about Yahoo! allowing more and more publishers in the future. As I mentioned above, I’d also like to see more inside “network-ing” and socializing – at the end of the day, I believe in the power of the community (especially in such a large one) to guard the quality of the service and keep the bad guys out.
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