New “Yahoo! Buzz” Enhances Internet’s Leading Starting Point with More Relevant, Open Content
Yahoo! Buzz Improves Yahoo.com with More of the Best Content from Across the Web
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Yahoo! Inc., (NASDAQ: YHOO) today introduced Yahoo! Buzz, an extension
to Yahoo.com that opens up the Internet’s
leading starting point by uncovering the most interesting and relevant
content from websites across the Internet and bringing more buzz-worthy
stories to the homepage of Yahoo!. Currently in beta, Yahoo! Buzz
measures consumer votes and search patterns to identify interesting and
timely stories and videos from large news sources as well as niche blogs
around the Web. Top stories are then given primary editorial
consideration for feature placement on Yahoo.com.
Yahoo! Buzz can highlight anything – a major
news event, an intriguing video or image, or an interesting blog post –
and instead of editors, real people vote and search for their favorite
stories to determine the top rated content from across the Web. Yahoo!
Buzz ranks the most popular content of the moment using a unique
approach that combines consumer votes with search popularity to give a
story a Buzz Score. This new initiative creates a lens on what people
are most interested in to enhance relevance on the popular Yahoo.com,
and help publishers deliver their best content to Yahoo!’s
broad and diverse audience of more than 500 million users.
“Yahoo Buzz 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,” said Jeff
Weiner, executive vice president, Yahoo! Network Division. “In
addition, we recently announced that 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!.”
“With Yahoo! Buzz, we are building on the
recent success of the homepage of Yahoo! and improving consumers’
favorite online starting point, by combining popular stories with the
wisdom of real people to determine what is most engaging and relevant,”
said Tapan Bhat, vice president, Front Doors and Network Services,
Yahoo!. “Consumer engagement with the Yahoo!
homepage has increased nearly 20 percent year-over-year, evidence that
continuing to open up and provide consumers with direct links out to
third party publishers keeps people coming back to Yahoo! again and
again.”
Yahoo! Buzz Brings Publishers’ Content to
Internet’s Largest Audience
Yahoo! Buzz builds on an openness initiative Yahoo! launched last year
in which editors began highlighting third-party content from across the
Web in the “Featured Today”
module on Yahoo.com. This effort has already provided tremendous value
for consumers and publishers, representing a first step in the creation
of a more open system for Web content. “When
Yahoo! linked to People.com’s Sexiest Man
Alive coverage, referrals from Yahoo! increased by over 11 times versus
the average day,” said Fran Hauser,
President, People Digital.
“Getting a link on Yahoo!’s
Front Page is like connecting to a fire hose,”
said Evan Hansen, editor-in-chief, Wired.com. “Thanks
to this program, we got more than 2 million page views in less than two
hours from a single headline, helping to drive a 1400 percent increase
in Yahoo! referral traffic versus the previous month and enabling us to
reach a vast audience that may not otherwise see the stories we publish
on Wired.com.”
In its beta phase, Yahoo! Buzz includes content from nearly 100
publishers, ranging from large online publishing brands to small,
influential blogs, and will grow from there to open up to all publishers
interested in having their content included in Yahoo! Buzz.
Participating publishers are given an online ‘badge’
enabling their readers to vote and submit stories to Buzz in real-time.
Stories with the highest Buzz Scores will be highlighted via direct
links to the publishers’ sites from http://buzz.yahoo.com
and submitted to Yahoo.com’s editors for
possible coverage on the Yahoo! homepage. Additionally, Yahoo! allows
users to submit Buzz stories to social news sites including delicious,
Digg, Facebook, Propeller, Reddit and Stumbleupon.
New Tools for Publishers and Advertisers
As Yahoo! Buzz evolves, it will form the basis for an open ecosystem of
publishers, advertisers and consumers. Yahoo! will develop this
ecosystem by building out new syndication and monetization tools that
enable publishers to share relevant content, connect to more advertisers
and reach a broader audience. For example, a Yahoo! Buzz API will enable
publishers to add customized Yahoo! Buzz modules or shortcuts to their
sites to showcase their own most buzzed items or other popular stories
on relevant topics. Over time, we expect this to extend into a powerful
content exchange that connects owners of content with distributors of
traffic.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most
trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on
powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and
developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo!
is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit
pressroom.yahoo.com or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal,
ycorpblog.com.
ContactsYahoo!
Meagan Busath, 408-349-3648
meaganb@yahoo-inc.com
or
OutCast Communications
Devon Corvasce, 415-515-1432
devon@outcastpr.com
http://www.yahoo.com