And Yahoo there too, or about social news

    According to Valleywag Yahoo! in late February, is going to open a social news service, a direct competitor to Digg . The service will be called Buzz, screenshots can be found here . Judging by them, the top topics will be entertainment, videos, etc., and the news will be traditionally sorted based on votes, search results, etc. However, Buzz has existed for a long time and presents simple statistics of user requests from Yahoo !. 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 brothers, for example,CoolSW from Intel. Personally, I am skeptical about social news, as their sociality is rather doubtful:
    • It is known that on Digg.com more than half of the news is generated by less than 1% of users, which means the presence of groups that generate the content they need and vote for it. Thus, it’s difficult, but not “mafia” content, to break into the main page. Digg's undemocratic principles can be found 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 win.
    • Voting for content by internal factors (news views, votes) does not reflect the real popularity of news in the media space in general. For example, for me, the popularity of a news story does not say anything, and indeed it is a mystery.  
    If we talk about domestic social news, there is a feeling that they “did not go” or are in their infancy. A clear definition of the audience of sites such as NewsLand and Smi2 is quite difficult, it’s 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 mode. Such an audience is unlikely to “cling” to social news sites, as there is:What is the reason for publishing the good news of the tape.ru to me, unless I’m 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 sites and in "single" blogs and "advertise" in LiveJournal communities or other blog services. In general, domestic social news is pretty tight, because There are tons of alternatives for the audience. For example, the popular NewsLandin this situation, it is aggressive: it tightens up traffic, which can be seen by the ratio of users and hits over the past six months, strictly motivates to register (for example, you can’t even leave a comment or see the user’s profile without registration), forcibly signs those who register for daily news e- mail, each view of the news considers a vote for her ... These measures have a dramatic negative effect on the core of the audience, as can be seen from its activity, the number of comments. Any blogger knows that competent comments always attract attention. If they are original and interesting, then many readers will want to get to know 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 is unlikely to appear, because, for example, LJ communities will give a greater effect. In general, it’s hard to say what Yahoo is counting on in the existing market (unless we “want the same project, but at home, for our audience, so that we won’t let it go to all kinds of Diggs”), as well as what domestic players are counting on. However, something can work out if they choose a specific niche, they will adjust the content policy for this niche. In view of the fact that they do not create content, but are an intermediary, interest in content among users can be created at the expense of qualitatively selected sources of information, its processing and display. Namely, quality stories created from many sources, supplemented by accompanying information. It is worth adding that one cannot do without exclusive materials.

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