Yahoo Buys BuzzTracker: Google News an ALSO RAN!
Latest buzz: BuzzTracker goes to Yahoo News, and so does its founder, Alan Warms.
Yahoo News? What Yahoo News! Google News is the most newsworthy, even though Yahoo News is number one!
Yahoo boasts its 35 million readers per month represent “about 15 times the circulation of the largest newspaper in the U.S., USA Today.”
If Google News was not part of Google, it would undoubtedly be tagged with the dreaded new bloggers anti-buzzword–”also ran,” i.e., any company in a given sector that has not been graced number one in the blogosphere’s world view of things. Boasting a Googley logo, however, Google News is cheered and feared, despite lagging Yahoo in traction, big time.
In the onlline news game, it is Google that is the big, bad ALSO RAN, to Yahoo News!
When Google News finally showed its news destination ambition true colors–i.e., “Google begins hosting news on its site, AP news stories”–it was the talk of the online town, even though Yahoo News has long been featuring AP material.
Today, Yahoo News is making its own news: The acquisiition of BuzzTracker. Not really buzz worthy, apparently though. Buzz Tracker does not seem to be judged to merit (self-interested?) blogger kudos as the ruling Techmeme does.
Blogger ennui re BuzzTracker, and Yahoo:
Kara Swisher: “Yahoo had looked at other better-known competitors…trendier and more popular startups”
Michael Arrington: “Yahoo Makes Tiny Acquisiition: It is odd that Yahoo didn’t make a run for TechMeme, the heavyweight in the automated news tracking niche. BuzzTracker has mostly been known for leaving spammy comments on blog posts that talk about Techmeme or Technorati to get a little extra traffic.”
Matthew Ingram: “It sems like a distant also-ran…I check Techmeme religiously because it is by far the best…Why did Yahoo buy BuzzTracker..It’s possible that Yahoo isn;t all that bright, and just picked the first meme-tracker with a cute name, or figured that $5 million is about what Terry Semel blows on the coprorate jet every year, so what the heck.”
Sorry Matthew, NOT quite the $33 billion market cap Yahoo rationale, as Scott Moore explains:
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.
YAHOO!