Yahoo! Buzz Is Now Open To The General Public
I just got an email from Yahoo! that notified me that Yahoo! Buzz is now open and available to the general public. Yahoo Buzz! is a social network that has been in beta for awhile now and was only available to selected people. That remains no more and anyone can now grab buttons for their blog and contribute in this new social network.
I already have some buttons added to my blog and I am real curious to see if Yahoo! Buzz can send me traffic. So, after reading my posts, if you like it Buzz it up for me so that I can see how well Yahoo! Buzz compares to Digg, StumbleUpon, Sphinn and others.
Here is a copy of the email I received an hour ago:
START SUBMITTING STORIES TO YAHOO! BUZZ TODAY!
Thank you for your patience as we fine-tuned Yahoo! Buzz. You can now showcase your stories to the largest audience on the Internet. Visit our Publisher page to pick up a button for your site and see tips on ways to get more votes. Do not forget, your story may be featured on Yahoo.com. Good luck and welcome aboard.
START SUBMITTING STORIES TO YAHOO! BUZZ TODAY!
Thank you for your patience as we fine-tuned Yahoo! Buzz. You can now showcase your stories to the largest audience on the Internet. Visit our Publisher page to pick up a button for your site and see tips on ways to get more votes. Do not forget, your story may be featured on Yahoo.com. Good luck and welcome aboard.
GET STARTED NOW
http://buzz.yahoo.com/publishers
Yahoo! Buzz Team
You received this message because you entered your email address on Yahoo! Buzz. If you do not wish to receive future messages from Yahoo! Buzz, please reply to this email with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line. To learn more about Yahoo!’s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy: http://one.yahoo-email.com/r/5k22300/43w9260542j68140gge82d. Yahoo! Buzz is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
So what do you think, do you think Yahoo! Buzz can deliver the goods? In other words, do you think Yahoo! Buzz can crash your server just like Digg?
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Date/Time: 8-19-2008 23:00:31 Comment #18761
I hope that Buzz doesn’t turn into the next Digg. While I do find some good content on Digg, most of the time I am burying pretty much every thing on the main page.
Anything that deals with politics gets immediately buried, I don’t care how important it is. Most of the crap on there comes from the same sites over and over again while I only find that a few sites listed on there provide useful content.
I’d really like to find a digg like site that is geared toward smaller bloggers giving them a chance to get their content out there and get seen. With only a small amount of people controlling most of the content showing up on the Digg front page, it is hard for an average joe to experience the “digg effect” as they call it. I am not saying that it has not happened, but I almost always find myself dissatisfied with the main page of Digg.
I will keep an eye on Yahoo Buzz, like you stated Garry, hopefully they will actually keep an eye on submitted content that provides a worthwhile read.
Date/Time: 8-19-2008 23:17:49 Comment #18762
I am getting to the point where I want to say…
Ah, heck with it.
Digg sucks.
Digg has done absolutely NOTHING for my personal blog as well as many of my other blogs. The content quality I have submitted into Digg has been absolutely amazing, yet I see shit on their home page such as two lesbian chicks screwing in an igloo.
I have around 150 mutual friends in Digg, most of them I recruited myself from THIS blog. Any and all PULL I have in Digg has been created by myself of by the powers of this blog. Digg hasn’t done ANYTHING for me and NOR has their community.
The Digg community is nothing but a bunch of pigs who accept MONEY to use their power to get content ranked on the front page.
I’ll spare naming the individual who contacted me the other asking me to Digg something for him while also too admitting that he paid money to have someone handle his submission with the intention of trying to get it on the home page.
There was once a day where business owners, publishers and webmasters would pay professionals to help with SEO. Today, we are now mixing into a world where gaming Google, Yahoo, MSN is no longer the soul target. Today, we have “Professional Cheaters” who will take your money to “Optimize Your Submission” into Digg to get it on the front page. In other words, you pay them money and they ask their “Friends” to vote.
The more and more I see this, it angers me more and more. Digg sucks. It really sucks, and you know what, StumbleUpon isn’t very far behind. I can’t begin to tell you how much I get annoyed with people asking me to submit shit into these networks. I don’t mean content from my friends. My friends know if their content sucks, I am not going to vote. Pure and simple. But I am talking about the 100 or so people who IM me to get a vote… and you know, I am even guilty of this too. It’s stupid.
I can’t even calculate the number of times I have IM’ed my friends to ask them to vote on something… and you know what? What has this done for me? NOTHING… absolutely nothing… only thing it does is lessen the number of “Favors” I can get from my online friends.
As you can see, I heavily promote these social networking on my sidebar. They take up the same space that I charge over $100 dollars / month to an advertiser. What do they give me in return? Nothing! The only traffic I get from Social Networks are the traffic that I earned myself on my own. All my friends — most — from THIS blog are the people who are my friends in social networks.
I am very skeptical of Yahoo! Buzz, because I know all too well, that it is just a matter of time — if not already — before people start gaming their system. Everything is gamed. Search engines are gamed, social networks are gamed, even the very blogs you read are gamed. I think the Yahoo! Buzz system is new and very exciting and overall I would enjoy getting to know the system better, but I fear that it will end up being gamed just like the rest of the social networks.
Date/Time: 8-19-2008 23:30:22 Comment #18763
Ok so like here is a PERFECT example:
http://www.benjaminpatton.com/blogs-in-space/
Awesome post.. right? I think so, why not? It’s interesting! Right now only has 10 Diggs and that is even after a mass SHOUT, I just got the email. Will something like this make the front page? Hell no… why not? Should it? I don’t see why something like this shouldn’t?
So here is a second example… sorry Ben for using your blog here … look at his site bar. This dude busts his ASS in all these social networks to get attention, just like me. (look at my sidebar, you’ll see the same thing, Twitter, Digg, SU, Reddit, Mixx, etc….)
Does most of Ben’s stuff land the front page of these networks? I don’t know… I didn’t check, but it would be a pretty safe guess to say, NO! Just like my stuff. I write good stuff, I know it’s good… and does it make front page? Nope…
I don’t know… I just think too many people are investing too much time on social networks in hopes that their content will make the front page, when in reality it never will… its not due to quality, but rather it is due to the shady system of these places.
Date/Time: 8-20-2008 00:15:51 Comment #18768
I definitely agree wholeheartedly with you Garry! There is so much junk that shows up on Digg and the stuff that gets stumbled is rediculous.
I usually try to spend about 20 mins a day stumbling trying to find some good stuff, I maybe find 1 or 2 things during the week that I think is worthy of a thumbs up. Everything else gets a thumbs down from me.
You do write some great content and I’ve always helped you out whenever you asked for a Digg or Stumble. I know that your comments weren’t directly aimed at people who actually do help, but I can understand when you spend time actually writing a quality post only to have it never get the amount of exposure that it deserves.
Date/Time: 8-20-2008 00:21:50 Comment #18769
I’ve been holding off on submitting any of my content on my blog to any social networking. Not that I don’t try to write some great content, but due to all the points that you listed. A post on my blog will never see the front page of Digg until I hit Problogger status where I can just ask and have hundreds of diggs in a few hours.
I am going to focus on writing a really great article this week and stumble it and submit to Digg to see what happens. I always read a lot of bloggers saying to create lists posts and the like to get traffic, well I don’t want to be like everybody else. I don’t want to have to follow what everybody else is doing just because that is the cool thing to do.
What kind of person does that make you? A follower! Why do I want to do the same things that everybody else does. That doesn’t make me any different from the other millions of blogs out there. I want to be unique, have my own style and provide useful content for those that choose to read my blog.
Date/Time: 8-20-2008 00:36:34 Comment #18771
No not at all…. I appreciate all the votes. I guess in my little ramble what I should have made more clean is that you can only ask for X amount of favors from friends before it becomes annoying. So for me, I am starting to carefully consider the favors I ask from my friends. Asking friends to submit / vote on my content is great. I am very pleased with that. However, part of one of the posts I was trying to make was that I think people should consider the favors they ask of their friends. Would there be more of a payoff to ask 100 friends to vote or would it be better to ask that same 100 to just visit the blog directly and add some feedback in the comments.
Date/Time: 8-20-2008 08:34:20 Comment #18814
I was in the middle of a really long comment when something happened to my browser.
The outline was:
As long as Buzz! doesn’t overtake Digg and Microsoft doesn’t take Yahoo over I’ll be happy. That way the tech news won’t be owned by Microsoft.
I think its a shame that big companies can crush the innovative developers and entrepreneur’s by taking their ideas and throwing money at them.