Yahoo “Buzz up” To copy Digg.com

Well, it looks like Yahoo will be the next to copy Digg. Soon they will allow users to “Buzz Up” a website, picture or video. This will start with 100 publishers and then spread to the general public.
Although on the verge of a buyout from Microsoft, Yahoo didn’t let the guard down and announced the introduction of a new service, called “Yahoo Buzz”, which will imply users’ votes on the most interesting stories on the Internet. The service will be similar cu Digg and will have users “buzz” the best stories, which will later bring them to the Yahoo homepage.
“Yahoo is a good example of how we are continuing to innovate and open up our key starting points to third party publishers, making Yahoo more social and personally relevant for our half a billion consumers,” Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Network Division, said in a statement.
The new service will include anything from the latest news, to intriguing images or videos, and viewers will need to vote their favorites if they want to see them among the most popular. The system is meant to increase both the popularity of Yahoo’s website, as well as improve the way viewers relate to the content of Yahoo pages.
The main purpose will not be the ranking itself, but rather allowing users to contribute to Yahoo’s front page and better relate to it. According to statistics, Yahoo has an audience of 90 million viewers monthly in the United States alone, which means plenty of Buzzes.
Yahoo Buzz adds up to the openness of Yahoo’s initiatives, an aspect that Jerry Yang, company co-founder and chief executive, has been trying to promote. For starters, the service will include collaboration with 100 publishers, which means a “Buzz Up” button will appear on the websites of People, The New York Times or The Economist. The service will later extend to as many websites as possible.
But Yahoo doesn’t plan to stop here, as Weiner said: “We will be opening up our user interface for Yahoo Search, as well as creating a smarter inbox by opening up Yahoo Mail, two other key ways that consumers start with Yahoo.”