Yahoo Buzz a Threat To Digg?
comScore is reporting that Yahoo Buzz is now receiving more traffic than Digg, and that their traffic is more diverse and thus more attractive to advertisers.
Digg is still doing fine, and much of the success of Yahoo Buzz can be linked to the massive amount of traffic that Yahoo brings in. All Yahoo launches get that added momentum of being promoted by the traffic giant that is Yahoo.com. A lot of Yahoo Buzz’ traffic is probably casual (the most buzzed story right now has about 100 votes, compared to Digg’s 4000+), but it’s traffic nonetheless.
Digg’s metrics give credence to its reputation as attracting young male geeks. While Digg users are 60% male, Yahoo Buzz attracts slightly more females than males. Digg users also have a reputation of not clicking on any ads. The added attraction of possibly being featured on the front page of Yahoo is also drawing attention from publishers.
Yahoo Buzz is kind of a Digg-lite, a social news service for people who aren’t going to use it as their homepage. It’s also more broad than Digg. Let’s face it: Digg has become a sort of niche social news site. Any visit will see Barack Obama stories dominating the political news. If Digg users decided the presidential election, Obama would be declared dictator for life. Not everybody on the web shares these views, so if the want social news, they are likely to go to a site whose users digg (or buzz) up stories that match their views more accurately.
Yahoo Buzz doesn’t seemed to be pigeonholed into any specific group or purpose, so while it’s sort of lightweight and dull, its users are likely more receptive to a broader range of ads, not just t-shirts. Seriously, are Digg’s only sponsors Busted and Snorg Tees?
Thanks to Stan Schroeder at Mashable for the story.
Technorati Tags: digg, yahoo buzz, social news
