Yahoo!'s Buzz Sinks Digg

Yahoo! launched its Buzz Social News site in beta form in February. Unlike most Social News sites, only pre-approved publishers are allowed. And, while it was unclear just how well it would do, it seems that Buzz has really taken off.

A new comScore study shows that in April Yahoo! Buzz for the first time received more traffic than Digg. In fact, Buzz had nearly 7 million unique U.S. visitors in April, a 74% bump from March.

The fact is that the promotion aspect of Buzz, whereby hot stories get promoted to the Yahoo! front page, is a big draw for publishers. And it's driving a lot of traffic. Salon.com saw its first one million unique visitor day in its history due to a link from Buzz, and the Huffington Post saw a 800,000 unique visitor day mostly due to Buzz.

More important than just the overall statistics is the fact that the demographics of users is more diverse at Buzz. For example, Digg's users were only 39% women, while Buzz's users were 51% women - more in line with actual population.

Obviously this is good news for Buzz, as more women means less reliance on the "geek set," and more of a mainstream audience. Does it mean trouble for Digg? Digg's troubles with its user base and algorithms are no secret, but it still gets a ton of traffic.

Still, Digg isn't as mainstream as Yahoo! is. The key question is: now that Buzz has risen, can it stay there?