Community Man Random thoughts & deliberate clicks of a social media sidekick

I just got Buzzed by Yahoo! Buzz!

Ok, this may not be technically correct.  Actually, what happened is I received an email from Yahoo! Buzz regarding becoming one of their publishers.  Yahoo! Buzz is a social news site (similar to Digg) wherein users get to choose the toprated stories.   If you go to http://buzz.yahoo.com, you can choose from the most popular topics (based on what is searched on Yahoo!) what you think are the most popular stories.  The stories with the most Buzz gets published on the Yahoo! home page.

If you remember my post about Buzz a few months ago, I mentioned that the stories featured here comes from accredited publishers, but they may be opening their doors soon to other publishers (like us).  According to the email I received (btw, I subscribed to their mailing list when I first checked it out), the Buzz Team is "working hard to get the site ready for more publishers."  The best part of the email is this:

"...we will let you know as soon as Yahoo! Buzz is ready for you to join. We can't wait to bring you on board."

This is definitely good news to bloggers and other content publishers out there.  The traffic one can get from being featured in Buzz and in Yahoo!'s home page is invaluable.  That's why being featured in Digg's frontpage is such a coveted spot ( you just have to be ready for the Digg effect - sudden deluge of traffic that can bring down servers if you're not prepared).

I believe that it's timely to have an alternative to Digg because after being the top social media service for quite some time, many believe it has been the most deeply gamed social media service as well.  The so-called "wisdom of the crowds" is actually based on the opinion of the few power Diggers.  Hopefully, the Buzz provides a fresh alternative to social news and give more publishers a chance to showcase their content to a bigger audience.  If you want to be one of the publishers of Yahoo! Buzz, just head on over to this link: http://publisher.buzz.yahoo.com/about.