Following shortly in the footsteps of Stumpedia, Yahoo has finally released the beta version of Yahoo Buzz. Rumoured initially to be a ripoff or clone of Digg and Reddit, Yahoo Buzz generated much controversy both for and against the search marketing giant. However, it now seems that Yahoo Buzz may be targetting a new and seldom examined marketing niche.

What sets Yahoo Buzz apart from its competitors is the fact that it counts user votes as only one of a plethora of factors determining story ranking and popularity. Other factors include search frequency and linking dynamics. This helps to rate some of the most interesting content from around the web, subjecting it to a variety of catalysing and dampening factors.

Yahoo Buzz has great potential in making one of the most powerful publishing platforms on the World Wide Web. The coming weeks and months will show how it contributes to the promotion of popular content around the Internet.  This will also be great news for Search Engine Optimisation professionals, as they will be able to use their skills to overcome the rather mob-ridden social media scene.

Move over Google! If stumpedia has its way, it could be the next best thing since sliced bread. Or, sort of. Stumpedia is the new search engine in town. Unlike other search engines that are automated, Stumpedia claims to rely solely on human submissions, votes and categorization in order to rank relevant website search results.

There are no bots that go out and spider the Internet. Instead, the search engine plans to rely solely on the discretion of its human members to review and vet websites, and assign them to relevant keywords. In this way, it hopes to become an amalgam of a human edited directory, an encyclopedia and a search engine. It also hopes to eliminate all spam by the sheer qualifiying eye of the human reviewer.

Whether this business model can succeed is anyone’s guess. The name itself isn’t particularly imaginative, colorful or even meaningful. Still, its a whole new approach to Internet organization and navigation. The search engine, like other inventions of man, will evolve, and Stumpedia may be one such stump along the way.