Yahoo! Inc.announced the launch of Yahoo! Buzz, an extension to Yahoo.com, which would form the groundwork for an open ecosystem of publishers, advertisers and consumers.  Yahoo said that Yahoo! Buzz would open up the Internet’s starting point by uncovering the most interesting and relevant content from websites across the Internet and bringing more buzz-worthy stories to its homepage.

Yahoo stated, currently in beta, Yahoo! Buzz measures consumer votes and search patterns to identify interesting and timely stories and videos from large news sources as well as niche blogs around the Web. Top stories are then given primary editorial consideration for feature placement on Yahoo.com.

Yahoo noted that Yahoo! Buzz would enable publishers to share relevant content, connect to more advertisers and reach a broader audience. Yahoo added that it would allow users to submit Buzz stories to social news sites including delicious, Digg, Facebook, Propeller, Reddit and Stumbleupon.  Yahoo! Buzz can highlight anything, a major news event, an intriguing video or image, or an interesting blog post and help publishers deliver their best content to Yahoo!’s broad and diverse audience, Yahoo noted.  Looks interesting but we are going to have to see if this ever develops into something worthwhile.