Everyone seems to be talking about Yahoo Buzz these days, and about how it’s going to give Digg a run for its money.
I don’t get it.
Sure, the site is new and shiny. But they have nothing on Digg so far.
- Users of Yahoo Buzz can only vote on stories, they cannot submit them.
- Only select sites can have their articles featured (read: really big blogs). Yahoo says they are in beta, and are currently not accepting publisher applications.
- I doubt Yahoo will ever let smaller sites be featured. They’ll most likely keep it weighted towards the bigger sites, with some lame excuse like “all the traffic would kill your site!”
I admit that the potential traffic from Yahoo Buzz is great. As Daily Blog Tips pointed out:
TechCrunch recently published a post revealing the initial traffic details of Yahoo! Buzz. Salon.com reported over one million visitors to a story that was featured on the front page of Buzz. Confirming that number The Huffington Post claimed that they received around 800,000 visitors from the site as well.
My shared hosting definitely wouldn’t stand-up to traffic like that (heck, even Ars Technica has been running slower lately, no doubt from being in the Yahoo Buzz program). But I think most bloggers would agree that they would want the traffic anyway. Hosting issues can be taken care of, and isn’t it a well-known fact that the average Yahoo user is more likely to click ads than most web users?
Besides, by cutting-out smaller blogs, and by using a closed system requiring publishers to be approved before their stories can be submitted (which I have no doubt they will continue using), Yahoo Buzz will never be a true competitor to Digg. The best part of Digg is that any old blog can make it to the front page. If someone has good content that the users will respond to, the article can make it to the front page, uninhibited by restrictions set by the site.
Here’s my idea of how it should work…
If Yahoo is so worried about bringing down people’s shared hosting accounts, they should keep their opt-in publishing scheme, but not have an approval process. In order to have the possibility of having your stories featured, you should have to apply. That way you can’t complain if your server goes down, and anyone would be able to have their article submitted.
