For those who liked Digg, but have wondered where the site lost its way, Yahoo has had a service called Buzz, still in beta (isn’t everything these days?) which has become wildly popular, and seems to be making Digg totally unnecessary.
Web traffic analyst comScore is reporting that Yahoo’s Buzz social news service has already overtaken Digg in unique visitors per month, even though the social news site is still only in beta.
Yahoo Buzz had an explosive first few months, showing that it could generate 90% of the traffic that three-year old Digg could in only a matter of weeks. Furthermore, users of Buzz have been found to be more likely to comment on Buzzed stories.
The comScore report for April 2008 showed an astounding 74% month-over-month growth in unique visitors to Buzz, and a steady increase in minutes spent on the site. Also, over half the site’s visitors were women, likely due to Yahoo’s efforts to cater to female users with its Shine portal.
But the success behind Buzz is hardly surprising, as we noted when the service received an upgrade. Yahoo is a world-class property, and Buzz stories get a prominent place on the search engine’s front page.
Although it is doing better than Digg, on a volume basis, one wonders if Buzz will ever have the name recognition (on its own, without association with Yahoo) or social cachet of Digg.
Still, alternatives are good, and shake ups keep things from getting stale.
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[tags] Yahoo, Buzz, Digg, social news, comScore, beta [/tags]