My previous post, Google Walks Away from Digg Deal, left me with a question until this morning: why was Google interested in Digg? Digg has nothing but lots of members and lots of impressions (maybe half or less of Google’s search engine main-page hits). Here’s what my mind concluded: in February, Yahoo launched Yahoo Buzz (don’t stare!!). Well, I’m not sure when Google went after the Digg deal, but it seems Google took action to stand up against the big Y! competitor. Developing a new system like Digg is not a big task for Google, but getting a large number of users to adopt such a feature is a bit tedious, especially in a market for knowledge sharing where Digg, StumbleUpon, Propeller, and a long list of others are already available — even in my share icons at the bottom of posts!! And Digg is the top player in this market, so the $200M offer is not really significant enough for Google to justify it in the competition.
Not as polished as Digg, but it’s fine — it’s still in beta. And Yahoo has done lots of creative work. It’s simple to share information. Recently it opened up for everyone, which implies it will soon come out of beta. Tapan Bhat mentioned Yahoo Buzz will be generating lots of traffic (for a test, I have submitted one of my posts — will share the report in the next few days!!).
My best wishes to Yahoo Buzz. I would like to hear your views on this!!