And Yahoo to the same, or social news

According to Valleywag, Yahoo! in late February, is going to open a social news service, a direct rival Digg . The service will be called Buzz, screenshots can be found here . Judging by them, the top themes will be entertainment, video, etc., and the news is traditionally sorted based on polls, search results, etc. However, Buzz has been around for a long time and presents uncomplicated statistics on the queries of Yahoo! Users. Of course, social news looks like a good addition to the existing Buzz, but despite the nice design, what is the difference from Digg , Propeller , Reddit , as well as many thematic fellows, for example, Intel's CoolSW . Personally, I am skeptical about social news, because their sociality is rather doubtful:

• It is known that at Digg.com more than half of the news is generated by less than 1% of users, which means that there are, as it were, groups that generate the content they need and vote for it. Thus, it is difficult for useful, but not “mafia” content to reach the main page. About the undemocratic principles of Digg can be read here (English).
• If the audience is not clearly segmented, then the thematic line of content is blurred, it loses its usefulness for any segment of the audience. Therefore, thematic social news will benefit.
• Voting for content by internal factors (news views, votes) does not reflect the real popularity of news in the media at all. For example, for me, the popularity of this or that news absolutely does not say anything, and indeed is a mystery.

If we talk about domestic social news, then there is a feeling that they “did not go” or are completely in their infancy. Clearly defining the audience of such sites as NewsLand and Smi2 is quite difficult, easier to say: a community of active users (Internet surfers) who are ready to share their work with readers and discuss this news in an active way. Such an audience is unlikely to “catch up” with social news sites, because there is:

• Tabloid: marketgid.com , readme.ru , redtram.ru , as well as content generators, for example, trud.ru , and in the direction of yellowness: your way , kp , video service meoko.ru , a whole family of video kom.kom ...
• Business: Novoteka.ru , Yandex news , content on thematic sites, lots of business content generators for every taste.

What is the reason to publish to me the pretty news of the ribbon. Ru, if only I am not a PR manager of an obscure media that needs traffic for each of its material? If we talk about posting self-made content, then a significant part of users prefer to post it on blog hosting and in “single” blogs and “advertise” in LJ communities or other blog services. In general, the domestic social news is pretty tight, because for the audience there are lots of alternatives. For example, the popular NewsLand in this situation is aggressive: it boosts traffic, as seen by the ratio of users and hits over the past six months, strongly motivates registration (for example, you cannot even leave a comment or view a user profile without registration), forcibly signs those who registered to daily news e-mail, each viewing of the news counts as a voice for it ... These measures dramatically negatively affect the core of the audience, as can be seen from its activity, the number of comments. Any blogger knows that literate comments always attract attention. If they are original and interesting, then many readers will have a desire to get acquainted with their author, which will lead them to his website or blog. The user will leave comments if he is sure that with their help he will promote his resource. In the case of social news, such confidence can hardly appear, because, for example, LJ communities will have a greater effect. In general, it’s hard to say what Yahoo is counting on in the already established market (if only we don’t want the same project, but for ourselves, for our audience, not to let it go to all kinds of Diggs), and also what domestic players are counting on. However, something can work out, if they choose a certain niche, they will adjust the content policy for this niche. Due to the fact that they do not create content, but are an intermediary, the interest in the content among users can be created at the expense of qualitatively selected sources of information, its processing and display. Namely, high-quality plots created from many sources, supplemented by accompanying information. It is worth adding that without exclusive materials is not enough. But that’s another story (i.e. fasting).