Could Yahoo! Buzz get bigger than Digg?

While some would already say that Yahoo! Buzz has already proven itself to bring more massive amounts of traffic to publishers, this has only been felt by a select few. This week though, Yahoo! Buzz was opened to the public and it made a bigger promise Digg never accomplished.

Ever since Digg went live it has become the primary source of breaking news and great content for a lot of people. However, the audience is skewed towards the west and male demographics (it started out with tech) — a profile that made it famous but at the same time was its greatest weakness.

So what could Yahoo! Buzz do that Digg couldn’t do? Not much really, but let me draw the line where Yahoo! Buzz could make better progress than Digg.

• Yahoo! is mainstream so there’s no skew or favored topics. Every single story or news have the same footing in terms of audience preference. Digg had a hard time moving away from tech and the geek crowd. In fact, Digg still has 98+% male demographics.
• Digg is easily gamed because it’s purely democratic voting (though unequal voting powers) and the Digg management maintains there will be no editorial interference or moderation. Yahoo! is open about its moderation policy. They have an editorial team which promotes stories voted upon by the community (this system was originally introduced by Jason Calacanis on Netscape, now Propeller). That means now amount of friends or paid votes can get you featured unless it has been veted by an editor.
• Digg is an SEO magnet. Need backlinks? Submit to Digg. Even if you don’t get any votes, you still get the link value. In Yahoo! Buzz, this is totally eliminated. Now readers are guaranteed that stories have better quality and stories are not just linkbaits or some viral marketing stunt.
• Localization is the more exciting opportunity Yahoo! Buzz can get involve in. Imagine a blogger/publisher story being featured on a local Yahoo! portal (e.g. yahoo.com.ph)? That’s a lot of value added to Yahoo’s localization efforts.

Of course, this would all be up to Yahoo! and if they have enough manpower to implement this on a country-per-country basis. Still, IMO, Yahoo is in a better position to execute this than Digg.