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

India is Buzz-ing, will RP do the same?

Two buzz-worthy news that's really worth checking out.  First, Yahoo! Buzz just underwent a major face lift.  The new look now more prominently features contributions from the site's community.  There's a new "Buzz Updates" tab to make it easier to follow, vote for and comment on what your friends just buzzed up.  Also, you'll notice that when you submit a URL, the story headline and description will automatically be populated, this certainly makes submitting stories faster and easier.

The other news is Yahoo! Buzz just launched its first international version in India.  Check out http://in.buzz.yahoo.com and see how Yahoo! Buzz looks like once it's localized.  The people in India can now vote for the most buzz-worthy stories to Yahoo! India and beyond.  I understand the site is starting off with more than two dozen featured Indian publishers, but of course, users in India can submit, vote and comment on the stories that they personally find most interesting.

Do you think a localized Yahoo! Buzz in the Philippines would be a big hit?  It will be interesting to see how many Pinoys are into Digg, Reddit, or Buzz because that will give us an idea if there's a signifant number of Pinoys who will submit, vote and comment on Philippines-related stories.  I remember before when Digg was starting to get recognition for revolutionizing social news that some Pinoys tried to jump on the bandwagon but with a local twist.  One of them was Oks.ph (it's now an aggregator of Philippines-related news), Astigg.com (a cool name with tip of the hat to Digg), and Yehey's Hukayy.com,  all of them never really built a following in order for the sites to be, well, "self-sustaining."  Social news sites need a critical mass in order for them to be successful and buidling this community is not as easy as it looks (as Jason Calacanis learned with Netscape).  However, localizing social news certainly has its advantages and appeal, I just wonder why it didn't work here in the Philippines before and if Yahoo! does try to launch a Pinoy Buzz version, will it take off?  Maybe it's just a matter of timing.  Maybe the critical mass for a Pinoy social news site is here now, not 3 years ago.