Yahoo! Buzz is a new social media news site currently in Beta. With Yahoo! Buzz you can vote up stories to the homepage. A story is ranked based on its Buzz Score. The score is derived from search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives.

I’d imagine Kevin and Jay of Digg.com may be shaking in their boots right now because this means huge competition for other social media sites like Mixx and Reddit. Jay recently stated that Digg is not in a bidding war with Microsoft and Google but I’m sure many companies have their eyes on Digg.com and will pownce on it when opportunity arises.

ReadWriteWeb.com states that “Yahoo.com has sent approximately 16 million total referrals to just a subset of the publishers in the beta during the first two weeks via “Buzzing Now” links in the Featured section of the homepage.” This could be great for Internet Marketers and the social media community but from playing with Yahoo! Buzz so far I’m rather disappointed.

The type of content on Yahoo! Buzz is fairly mixed although there’s a huge dominance of celebrity news and entertainment. I feel that’s a waste of front page news real estate but perhaps that’s their target audience. With that said, the community will form around that type of content and Yahoo! Buzz will create it’s own niche. Other social media sites like Digg which has a tech focus and Reddit & Propeller which have a political focus shouldn’t need to fear. The chances that Yahoo! Buzz will steal enough community members to see significant changes in any other social media site is slim to none.

Content is not the only reason Yahoo! Buzz won’t dominate the other main social media sites. There is no sense of community in Yahoo! Buzz. They completely take “social” out of “social media”. I’ve only spent a limited time playing with Buzz so far but these are my observations:

Things You CAN do on Yahoo! Buzz

• Buzz Up/Down stories
• Email stories to someone’s email address
• Share Buzz stories on OTHER social media platforms

Things you CAN’T do on Yahoo! Buzz

• Submit content
• View profiles
• Add friends
• Create groups
• Share content within the site

Conclusion

In short, Yahoo! Buzz completely takes away all transparency from the community and puts users behind the curtains. In addition to the lack of transparency, the sources of content are cherry picked by the Yahoo! staff. Although some smaller blog sources are used it seems to be mainstream media that’s really dominant on Buzz thus far. When you take the sense of community out of a social media site and take away the sense of control then users will be more likely to stay clear. Yahoo! Buzz doesn’t really need to worry because they have such a strong Web presence they will always have readership. On the positive note for Yahoo!, it cuts down on spam submissions and distasteful commentary.