Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo has expanded the social news Web site it debuted in a limited  test format in February, with the Monday launch of its Yahoo Buzz public voting effort now able to include popular writing, images and video content from any location on the Web. The full Web-wide expansion saw Yahoo Buzz, which uses a combination of user votes and editors to help push popular online content onto the heavily-trafficked Yahoo homepage, replaced a trial system that only allowed content from about 400 well-established Internet news and blog sites. Yahoo Buzz Looks To Shed Light On Obscure Content The expansion, which was announced late Monday on Yahoo's corporate blog in a message posted by the Web pioneer's senior vice president of front doors, communities and network services Tapan Bhat, will let the roughly 5 million Yahoo Buzz users the online pioneer claims vote on virtually any content available on the entire Web. When Yahoo began the social news site six months ago it had lined up about 100 online news and information publishers to participate, a number that had quadrupled before the expansion announced Monday, with such partners as the New York Times, Us Weekly, Salon.com, GigaOm, BoingBoing, VentureBeat, and the online edition of PC Magazine. With the full massive scope of the Web available to Yahoo Buzz users, the site my help Yahoo as it looks to become the top choice in a field of similarly-styled services offered by such as rivals Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Time Warner AOL's Propeller. Yahoo said such a rise in the popularity of Yahoo Buzz was possible by "making it possible to give as much visibility to extraordinary content from an obscure site as major news stories from big publishers," and Bhat added that "anything you find on the Web is now buzzable." Yahoo's Homepage Awaits As Jackpot For Most Popular Content Web pioneer Yahoo has seen its homepage remain as one of the top destinations on the Web, an enticing prospect for those looking to gain a potentially vast audience for online content, and one that the Sunnyvale company hopes will place its Yahoo Buzz in a stronger position than rivals that  don't have such a viewer jackpot ready to reward the most popular content. Yahoo Buzz lets users vote for, find and share "the content and stories that matter most to you," according to Bhat, including content such as "current event stories, gossip, photos, videos and more," Bhat wrote in the Monday message announcing the expansion. During the trial of Yahoo Buzz some partner sites saw an increase in audience numbers, such as Salon and GigaOm, according to Yahoo. Partners in the trial program could put "Buzz Up" buttons on their Web content for viewers to voice their approval, and with the changes announced Monday the buttons can now be added to any Web site. "Any site is able to add our button," Bhat said. "Just grab code from our Buttons page and paste it into your website or blog," he added. Sites that don't have one of the Yahoo buttons can be included in the Yahoo Buzz listing as well. "If you don’t see that button on a Web story you just have to share, you can submit a story right on Yahoo Buzz," Bhat noted. Yahoo Buzz Leaves The Social News Hive With Web-Wide Expansion While it's not readily revealed on the Yahoo Buzz site that editors play a part in determining which items wind up on Yahoo's homepage, and indeed some may be led to believe such is not the case when being presented with a notice stating that, "Instead of editors, people like you determine the  top-rated stories," elsewhere on the site Yahoo explains that "we also have members of our team comb through all the top content on Yahoo Buzz and select items to appear on the Yahoo homepage." Yahoo has said that other factors such as how frequently information is searched for using its second most popular search engine and how often links to some content is e-mailed are considered when determining the content to place prominently on Yahoo. "Our rankings also take into account things like trends in search queries on Yahoo Search, and the number of times that content is shared with friends over email," the company said on its Yahoo Buzz site. During its test stage Yahoo Buzz managed to outperform leading rival Digg in usage figures gathered by Web traffic analysis firm comScore, which showed the Sunnyvale firm's social news site attracting more women than its rival. Now that Yahoo has expanded Yahoo Buzz to include most Web content, the site is likely to see an even greater numbers of users looking to "buzz up" their favorite news stories or videos. Related Links:
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