Yahoo takes aim at Digg with Buzz

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 26 Feb 2008 at 12:13

Yahoo has introduced a Digg-style news service called Buzz, allowing users to vote for content across the web that will appear on the Yahoo homepage.

Currently in beta, Buzz combines search term popularity and the number of votes a story receives to give it a Buzz score, propelling it up the rankings on the Buzz site. Those stories with the highest scores will then appear on the heavily trafficked Yahoo homepage.

The company says its aim is to become more relevant to its half a billion users.

"With Yahoo Buzz, we are building on the recent success of the homepage of Yahoo and improving consumers' favourite online starting point, by combining popular stories with the wisdom of real people to determine what is most engaging and relevant," says Tapan Bhat, vice president of Front Doors and Network Services at Yahoo.

Open search
In a separate announcement, Yahoo is also planning to increase the amount of information displayed in its search results.

Under the scheme, website owners will be able to provide extra data directly to Yahoo Search through APIs and have it added to search results. For example, searching for a restaurant might pull up a map and additional information on reviews and availability.

"Instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites - ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data - directly on the Yahoo Search results page," says Vish Makhijani, general manager of Yahoo Search, adding that users will be able to turn off anything related to open search if they choose.