Yahoo! News tracks the buzz

Posted September 14th, 2007 at 9:00 am by Scott Moore, News & Information

 11 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

Did you know that Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995 gave life to what we now know as Yahoo! News? On that grim day for Deadheads everywhere, co-founder David Filo compiled a webpage with links and outsourced information on Garcia’s life and death. That was the first example of Yahoo! gathering the most relevant content around a news topic, regardless of where it came from. Today Yahoo! News is excited to continue in David’s footsteps — in Web 2.0 fashion.

Alan Warms today joins Yahoo! as the general manager of News through the acquisition of BuzzTracker. BuzzTracker does just what the name insists — it tracks 110,000 content sources (traditional media and blogs) to take the pulse of what’s happening in various topic areas on the Net. Alan and the folks at BuzzTracker have come up with a way to spotlight the hottest information and give users a tool that makes the information easily digestible.

I’ve known Alan for years, but we got reacquainted at the All Things D conference in May. I realized then that we share the same vision for news — providing the best news content possible, whether traditional or citizen journalism, to a mainstream audience while making the technology invisible. He’s a serial entrepreneur with a history of developing new media technologies, but his mantra is “Does it pass the Mom test?” Alan has both fantastic editorial judgment and a strong business sense — a boon to both our users and advertisers.

Yahoo! News is the number one news site with 35 million readers per month (that’s about 15 times the circulation of the largest newspaper in the U.S.!) and while we know we’re doing something right, we recognize there are still many opportunities ahead. Does this signal a radical shift for how we’ll run Yahoo! News? No. BuzzTracker technology will help improve the breadth and relevancy of our content — regardless of the source. But with Alan on board, we’ll bring organization to the thousands of conversations happening across the Internet and help users better sift through the news to find what they care about most.

Here’s Alan’s take on it.

Scott Moore
Head of News & Information

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11 Comments Add your own

miles | September 14th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

Wow, that’s more than 2.5 times the top 20 US newspaper’s circulation combined.

Scott Lawton (Blogcosm) | September 15th, 2007 at 3:05 pm

Thanks for providing a personal view. It’s helpful for entrepreneurs to get some insight into specific acquisitions. I included an excerpt plus snippets from several other blogs to create a fairly comprehensive BuzzTracker roundup.

Gina Sierzputowski | September 27th, 2007 at 11:07 am

How does BuzzTracker work? Is this similar to Google’s PageRank?

Peter Rodrick | September 28th, 2007 at 7:15 am

Is Yahoo! concerned with any possible copyright infringements it may encounter with the methods in which the news is gathered, displayed, and syndicated? If yes, how will you attempt to avoid or remedy any infringements? If not, how does the Yahoo! News service avoid infringing upon copyrights?

Jared Raphel | September 30th, 2007 at 9:16 pm

I am a student at Binghamton University taking a course entitled “Googled and Yahooed”. I am curious to know if Buzztracker actually has a news team of their own or if the information is found on a search engine?

Serkan Kaya | October 3rd, 2007 at 12:07 am

Hello. My name is Serkan. I am a student in SUNY-Binghamton University and currently enrolled in a course named “Googled and Yahooed” in “Africana Studies” department. What I wonder is how BuzzTracker gets hottest news from 110.000 media channels i.e. does it simply subscribe to RSS feeds of these media resources and show those feeds on a main page?

Jason | October 3rd, 2007 at 11:02 am

By purchasing BuzzTracker, is Yahoo! admitting that its branch (Yahoo! News) is inferior to BuzzTracker and needs to be revamped and updated to compete with other News sources?

– Jason
“Googled and Yahooed, Africana Studies
Binghamton University

Mia Bieman | October 3rd, 2007 at 6:29 pm

How is it that Yahoo! determines what is ‘hot information’? Also, the article states that information is available, regardless of the source, so does that mean that none of the news is filtered by Yahoo!?

Lisa Olynk | October 3rd, 2007 at 8:04 pm

“BuzzTracker technology will help improve the breadth and relevancy of our content — regardless of the source.”

Does Yahoo! News take into account the reliability of the information it is passing on as news?

Ashley T | October 8th, 2007 at 8:56 am

My name is Ashley Titus and I am a student in the Googled and Yahooed class at Binghamton University. As an assignment I am to ask you some questions.
- How will the new BuzzTracker not take away the readers of Yahoo News?
-What exactly makes BuzzTracker different from reading the news anywhere else?

Alan Warms | October 8th, 2007 at 1:38 pm

@Serkan: BuzzTracker uses a proprietary algorithm that examines blog posts to determine the most important stories for a particular topic.

@Jason: Not at all — Yahoo! is consistently in the hunt for new technologies and approaches that can extend and be additive to our offering and footprint.
BuzzTracker is an excellent addition to the industry leading Yahoo! News offering.

@Gina Sierzputowski: BuzzTracker uses a proprietary algorithm that examines blog posts to determine the most important stories for a particular topic.

@Peter Rodrick: BuzzTracker works much like a search engine does — providing the best news links for a given topic.

@Jared Raphel: BuzzTracker does have an editorial team in addition to its technology.

Alan Warms
VP & GM, Yahoo! News