The Buzz is now opening up. Yahoo announced that its Buzz ratings service, at buzz.yahoo.com, will be open to the public as of Tuesday evening.

Buzz had been first introduced in February as an alpha experiment of Yahoo’s community news-rating service. At the instance, Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat, vice president of front doors, communities, and network services at Yahoo, wrote on a company blog that it was “a new way for you to discover, vote for, and share the subject matter and stories that matter most to you.”

Everything Now ‘Buzzable’

When it first launched, users could vote for composition, and there was a Publishers Network of about 100 publishers. Beginning today, users can send in suggested subject matter, and the Publishers Network is open to any Web publisher. The subject matter can be any kind, not just news, so theoretically photo blogs and product releases could show up.

For the users, Bhat wrote in an updated blog entry

Tuesday, anything on the Web “is now Buzzable” by submitting and sharing it on Yahoo Buzz. “The more strange and compelling the story, the better chance your story of choice will buzz up to the Yahoo home page,” he added.

Uses cast a vote for the most interesting Web stories, videos or pictures. The items with the highest Buzz Scores are featured on the Yahoo home page. Buzz Scores factor in users’ votes, as well as results from Yahoo’s organic search-popularity ratings.

Similar to the popular Digg service, Yahoo Buzz has one major advantage: Chosen composition moves to the hugely trafficked Yahoo home page. Another difference is the inclusion of organic search engine listings as a factor in determining which stories drift to the top. According to news reports, Buzz generated more strange users than Digg beginning in the spring.

Five Million Users

Some observers are suggesting that substance does not drift…

Original post by dhiram