Valleywag
Yahoo Buzz, the Digg competitor we uncovered last month, has Web publishers giddy over traffic binges. Us Weekly, Salon and Michael Arrington's TechCrunch all report that when Yahoo Buzz put links to their sites on Yahoo's homepage, they posted record traffic days. "It's clear that a link from Yahoo.com blows away anything Digg or any other competitor can offer," Arrington writes on TechCrunch. "That will keep the Buzz publishers, who must be invited into the service, paying attention." And paying for traffic, according to Yahoo's plan.
The payola is indirect. Yahoo's intention with Buzz is to lure publishers into its advertising network. Publishers will give up part of their ad inventory, as well as a cut of sales, to Yahoo. Yahoo's willing to turn on the traffic firehose, but only if publishers let it set up buckets at the other end. Great for Yahoo, great for publishers. But one wonders if anyone has thought about Yahoo's users in this whole pageview-padding scheme. Sure, they'll get to vote on stories — but only if they're on a site in bed with Yahoo.
What do you think? You don't have to join an ad network to vote in our poll:
Comments
People who read Yahoo Buzz wouldn't care, or even notice. Digg fanboys would bitch about it, but Kevin would say something ambiguous enough to make them happy while still taking the money. Reddit? No one cares about them; Conde Nast has better places to make money.
digg is screwed
I needs to incorporate a little Buzz when we launch our crappy little search engine.
-Harry "Wantrapreneur" Wang
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