Tonight I saw the post over at TechCrunch writing about the upcoming relaunch of Yahoo Buzz and how it was morphing into a DIGG style voting of news items. TechCrunch gave us the heads up that the new Yahoo Buzz beta is only open to Yahoo employees at this point but that posters have been up around the Yahoo offices plugging the site’s arrival on this coming Monday, February 25th at 9:00 pm.

Though the TechCrunch article stated the url on the posters alpha.buzz.yahoo.com was protected I had to go check it out for myself, if nothing else but see what was up with the old Yahoo buzz. At first arrival at the alpha site I came across the password protected stuff, so no go there, I decided to do a Google site search to see if Google happened to find a hidden page or even a cached bit for us. Bingo! Google had a page for us and the page was not protected. Here are a couple screenshots I grabbed, this one and one at the bottom of this post along with bullet points for the publishers wishing to get their content in front of the voters on Yahoo Buzz and even the main Yahoo home page.

The new Alpha Yahoo Buzz People catagory page is still open so go see it for yourself. I was even able to log in with my regular Yahoo account and vote for the story at the top of the page. You can see in my screen grab where it says “Thanks for voting! and the “buzzed!” count right above the orange thanks for voting message. I still wanted to find out more about this new Yahoo Buzz thing and I found one other link that was not protected. That page I found is the Yahoo Buzz Publisher page and it’s not even in the alpha sub-domain. This tells us more about the new Yahoo Buzz social news site including the following:

• Buzz gets your content on the Yahoo! network.
• Buzz features the most interesting stories and videos on the Web
• Content is ranked based on votes, search-term popularity, and what everyone is reading and emailing - right this instant
• Buzz drives traffic directly to your site to read the full story
• Users can vote for your content from your site or on Buzz itself
• Top Buzz content may be featured on the Yahoo! homepage
• mebeliStay tuned for upcoming syndication tools, including APIs and customized modules…
• Partner with Buzz: We’ll be accepting new publishers soon. Join our mailing list for updates.

Looks like we will have another social venue to contribute to very soon with Yahoo Buzz. Will Yahoo Buzz battle DIGG, Propeller, MIXX for big time social traffic? Yahoo has a big community already, only time will tell if they can get those folks to get active with the socializing of news. What are your thoughts?

MinnPost, a new online daily news publication launches today at 11:00 am. MinnPost is a not-for-profit news site dedicated to the Twin Cities and Minnesota. CEO and editor of MinnPost is Joel Kramer. Joel is the former editor of the Star Tribune from 1983 to 1991 and publisher and president from 1992 to 1998.

Joel and the rest of the MinnPost crew is what makes this launch intriguing. MinnPost has pieced together a cast of first-rate editors and journalists, many that have previously worked for the Pioneer Press, Star Tribune, City Pages and other Minnesota media outlets. A few names you may recognize are Roxane Battle, Dave Beal, David Brauer, John Camp, Doug Grow, Britt Robson, Jay Weiner, and Steve Aschburner. These are just a sampling of over 40 journalists that have galloped in to the MinnPost stable.

I am excited to see how MinnPost fares and if they will draw online traffic that compares with the other major media sites in town. They will be covering a full gamut of topics ranging from arts and sports to politics and news. MinnPost has stressed they are focusing on quality over quantity and I can appreciate their stance of ignoring celebrity and entertainment. One concern I have is they have said they will be publishing news 5 days a week and only a limited number of new stories and posts will be published each day. Without even seeing a days worth of stories yet, already I am afraid I will be left wanting more. With the wealth of writers MinnPost has I can only hope they pump out both quality and quantity.