If you’ve established a contact list on Yahoo, you’ll now see the stories that those people are buzzing up in a new “Y! Updates” section on the Buzz homepage. Additionally, Buzz votes are now a part of user profiles, allowing you to see what stories a user has Buzzed up or down, and also see cumulative stats like how many times someone has been the “first Buzzer” (the original person to submit the article) and the total number of comments they’ve left on the site.
Yahoo has also added a commenting system very similar to that of Digg, allowing you give thumbs up or down to individual comments, along with threaded replies. Clicking on user’s avatar or name lets you click through to their profiles, where you can then advance to see their full Yahoo profile.
These new features are interesting for a couple reasons. First, they show the potential of the Yahoo Open Strategy – users of Buzz essentially become users of Yahoo’s new universal profile, helping create a huge social network behind the scenes. Additionally, it is starting to become increasingly obvious that Yahoo Buzz is going to keep adding the same features as Digg, as it did when it launched its “Up & Coming” section a couple months back.