Yahoo! launches Buzz to track user trends

The portal, designed on the lines of Digg.com, will showcase online content that is most popular with Yahoo users

Yahoo! Inc. has launched a portal called Yahoo! Buzz (http://buzz.yahoo.com), which will track the Internet content that is most read by online visitors. On the portal, Yahoo! will showcase news articles, blog posts, photos and videos that appear on the page in order of their Buzz Score. The score is calculated based on the popularity of search terms, votes by users and the number of times the item is forwarded through email.

Yahoo! has tied up with 100 publishers, including portals such as WashingtonPost.com and blogs such as Wordpress, whose content will be tracked on the site. Yahoo! has provided these publishers with an online badge through which their readers can vote for the story on Buzz. The company will integrate some of these stories on the Yahoo! home page.

In fact, the Yahoo! Buzz model is similar to that of Digg.com where users submit stories which are then voted on by other users. Google has a similar trend tracking initiative called Google Zeitgeist for search terms. Yahoo! plans to evolve this model by building an “open ecosystem” of publishers, advertisers and consumers. Through syndication of the content, Yahoo! plans to monetise Buzz by connecting advertisers to content that users find interesting.

Eventually, Yahoo! will link its home page, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Search with content that is chosen by users, making it more relevant for advertisers.

“Yahoo Buzz is a good example of how we are continuing to innovate and open up our key starting points to third party publishers, making Yahoo! more socially and personally relevant for our half a billion consumers,” said Jeff Weiner, executive vice-president, Yahoo! Network Division, in a statement.

“Consumer engagement with the Yahoo! homepage has increased nearly 20 per cent year over year, evidence that continuing to open up and provide consumers with direct links to third party publishers keeps people coming back to Yahoo! again and again,” said Tapan Bhat, vice-president, Front Doors and Network Services, Yahoo!