Yahoo announced the move on its Yahoo Buzz site Monday. “This was a hard decision,” the company wrote in its post, which notes that the site will shut down on April 21. “However this will help us focus on our core strengths and new innovations.”
Yahoo reps could not be reached for further comment.
Introduced in February 2008, Yahoo Buzz was presented as a “new way for you to tell us (and the world) what you think is cool,” according to a blog post at the time. For a while, Yahoo Buzz buttons, similar to Digg's or (later) a Facebook “Like” button, appeared widely on editorial content outside of Yahoo’s network. The idea was if you liked a story or blog post, you could “Buzz Up” it and then Yahoo would present a list of the most-Buzzed items on a dedicated site. By May 2008, comScore reported that Yahoo Buzz had more monthly unique visitors in the U.S. than Digg.
Yahoo’s bid to be a social news aggregator, however, never quite coalesced. The reason: The marketplace seemed to favor Facebook, Twitter and one more -- maybe Digg or Reddit. Over time, Digg lost its influence and even Google failed to get much traction with a similar platform called Google Buzz.
"I think in any market, there's always room for three -- one dominant, second-based and the third is a niche type of player," says Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with the Altimeter Group. Owyang adds that Google's inability to crack the market is a function of the company's size. "Google has gotten so big, it's hard for them to be as nimble. Yahoo is the direction Google is heading if they can't become nimble again."
Others blame Yahoo's execution. "I think [Yahoo Buzz] was far too confusing and muddled," says Erik Martin, community manager for Reddit. "The users were never sure what was at the top because it was from a Yahoo site, what was at the top due to actual user voting, and why the Yahoo editors selected some links to be featured on the Yahoo homepage and didn't promote others."