New Delhi — Internet search major Yahoo on Thursday launched its Digg-clone service called Yahoo Buzz in India, making it easier for Buzz users and followers to submit, vote and comment their friends and keep track of the whole Buzz community’s activities as the site is now sporting a new look.
Yahoo Buzz allows people to vote and comment on the news stories they find most interesting in order to help shape the headlines on Yahoo!’s homepage.
“Yahoo! Buzz is a great example of how we can combine popular stories with the wisdom of real people to determine what is most engaging and relevant to our millions of users,” Yahoo! India Head of Audience Frazier Miller said in a statement.
India is the first country outside the U.S. to get Internationaly version of Yahoo Buzz. If it becomes sucessful, we might see more country-specific Yahoo Buzz in the future. More than 60% of Internet users in the country are younger than 25 years old, and there is a lot of interest among users in social media tools such as Buzz, said Miller.
Yahoo Buzz India highlights the buzz-worthy stories in the country and is kicking off with more than two dozen featured Indian publishers. It may not be as much as the publishers in Yahoo Buzz U.S. but expect this to grow once the word about Yahoo Buzz India starts buzzing around.
Yahoo is planning on launching its products across a number of markets at the same time, Miller added.
Buzz helps Yahoo understand people’s interests and improve the relevance of content on its Indian home page, Yahoo said on Thursday. Buzz also helps publishers deliver their best content to Yahoo’s broad and diverse audience, it added.
Content from over 20,000 publishers worldwide has been submitted to Yahoo Buzz since it launched in the U.S. last year.
Yahoo! Buzz in India already features content from publishers like NDTV, India Today Group, Times of India, Zee, A2 Media and One India.
However, introducing the product into international markets is an interesting step for Yahoo Buzz. They have chosen the market well, as Digg-clones have always been popular in India; one that comes to mind is the simplistic IndianPad. The Indian version of Yahoo buzz is essentially the same as the original, only with a focus on India-related news.
The interest of publishers for the Indian Yahoo Buzz, as well as general success of the site, will probably be a test for expanding the service to other markets.
Yahoo does not have immediate plans to introduce Buzz in Indian languages even though it runs some of its Web sites in local languages. In the future, Yahoo may integrate advertisements into Buzz in order to generate revenue, Miller said.