“Buzz Up” your profile!
While you’ve been polishing your profile you might have noticed a section called “Updates.” Here, you can check out what your connections are up to-including who they’re connecting to, what their latest status message is, and, stories they’ve “buzzed up” or commented on recently. Now, you can also see what your friends are up to on Buzz by going straight to the Yahoo! Buzz Beta homepage.
Not familiar with Yahoo! Buzz? It’s a recent addition to the Yahoo! family launched in February 2008 that allows you to submit stories you find online, or, more commonly, vote up stories that other users have already submitted.
Last week the Buzz team added a few new social features, including commenting, updates, and viewing your connections’ activity. If enabled, whenever you “buzz up” a story, it shows in your new profile, providing another way to share your interests with your connections.
To check out the latest changes to Buzz, be sure to visit http://buzz.yahoo.com and start buzzing! The main page of Buzz scrolls through the top buzzed stories in the last 12 hours (default, but you can change it to cover more or less time), the top searches, and your most recent connection updates.
In order for you to “buzz up” a story or comment on a story, you must be logged into your Yahoo! account, and can opt to have this information displayed on your profile and to your connections.
To change your settings on whether or not you want to share your Buzz updates, you can go to the Settings tab in your profile, and then click on Updates. Then, check or uncheck “Yahoo! Buzz” depending on your preference. (For a shortcut, just click here: http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/updates)
If you’re a blogger (like me) you can submit your own stories to Yahoo! Buzz by going to the publishers page for more information.
You can quickly and easily add a Buzz widget to most blogs, letting your connections know what you’re up to much more easily. For more details on adding the Buzz widget to your blog, please visit the Yahoo! Buzz publisher’s page. Or, to manually submit a story you find online, go to: http://buzz.yahoo.com/submit/ to share your story’s details.
Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager
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- 77 Comments
November 10th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Ahh another product that we do not need or want way to go Yahoo! I thought this blog was about the profile fiasco instead you are pimping more lame duck products that are obviously not being used or why else push them here?
November 10th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Dave,
It is about profiles, and since Buzz integrates into your profile we figured we’d provide a little more information about the different aspects of it.
-Melissa
November 13th, 2008 at 6:39 am
it looks like Microsoft beat you to the punch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/12/sweeping-changes-at-livecom-its-a-social-network/
November 13th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
hi melissa, I use Firefox as my default browser but, since this idiotic change to profiles, whenever I click on a profile it opens in internet explorer, could you tell me why that is
December 7th, 2008 at 11:25 am
hi melissa, I use Firefox as my default browser but, since this idiotic change to profiles, whenever I click on a profile it opens in internet explorer, could you tell me why that is
——
try checking your computer..if it set for IE being your main browser, that would tell you your answer. so,….just set firefox as your default.
this SHOULD solve that for you…
but I’ll warn you,…you MAY find sites on the net that are non firefox friendly and it MAY cause you some unwanted grief…
best wishes
December 17th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
and you call Yahoo user friendly, Melissa?
December 20th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Actually gary the other guy is probably right about that because I only use Firefox and it is set up as my default browser. But in yahoo messenger everytime I click a link to anything it brings up Internet Explorer and I don’t know a setting in Messenger I can change to fix that. If anyone does let me know.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Amen! Who cares about another networking service–just get the profiles to show as they have for years. I wrote about this problem to Yahoo about six weeks ago and got the same response today when I wrote about it the second time. And then, I was directed to this page on Buzz, which I could care less about! Get the act together Yahoo, about what people really want.
November 10th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
First thing my eyes fall on: “you’re profile”. *sigh*
Otherwise, pointless to say anything, my original opinion about all this mess still stands.
November 10th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Ick. This only makes me lose further hope for Yahoo. You’re not making the change any better. Infact, you’re only making things worse. I see less and less comments about this profile issue, which mostly means that people are just giving up and quitting Yahoo. I’m sorry, but I quit you, Yahoo!. You have destroyed everything that once made you cool. Now you’re just a poser wanting to be like everyone else.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:30 am
[...] partir de ahora desde los perfiles de Yahoo! Profile será posible seguir los movimientos de tus amigos y seguidores que realicen en Yahoo! [...]
November 11th, 2008 at 4:57 am
I think people enjoyed Yahoo because of the simplicity of it. By changing over to this new profile system, Yahoo is no longer simple. If we wanted to make up profiles like that we would have used Yahoo 360, MySpace or some other networking site. Yahoo is obviously not interested in how its members regard these new profiles because if they were a change would be made. It was said that some of the features would be brought back, like the smilies that indictated online/offline status; where are those features???
November 14th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Kate,
The team is actively working on incorporating all of these features and requests back into profiles.
I/we appreciate your patience, and I’ll be sure to let you know when they’re available!
-Melissa
November 11th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Wow… Ok, I’ve got to agree with the others on this one. I’d like to think I’ve gotten over the change to the new system, and perhaps even taken advantage of it’s different features in ways I couldn’t with the old profile system… But this stuff is absolute garbage. A needless feature at best… All things considering Melissa, perhaps it would be best to urge the teams working around the new profile system at Yahoo! to give returning promised features from the system and improving the new one top priority, and put pointless features like this one on the back-burner. After, considering how they dropped the ball with changing the profile system in the first place, and giving us the new one while it was still incomplete at that, I think stability comes before eye-candy.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Hi Nale,
Thanks for your feedback. Buzz actually launched back in February and is a different team of developers than the profiles team, so they’re working on things simultaneously.
The team is aware of the requests and features you all have mentioned here and as I’ve mentioned, they’re working hard to implement them.
-Melissa
November 11th, 2008 at 7:04 am
No, don’t buzz up Yahoo! Don’t buzz it up or down or left or right or do anything else to encorage this idiotic design scheme, PLEASE. Just tell them that its unacceptable and go back to basics. Get rid of the stupid facebook crap and give us back the functionality we CAME to yahoo for. Stop messing up the one thing your compan has going.
Melissa please, try to make your bosses understand how stupid this is. Try to get them to see that they are ticking off the people who make them money, that if this keeps up they are going to be out of a job. Are they trying for that whole ’stimulus package’ thing? because I doubt Obama is going to bail out a company that is running itself into the ground.
These are not features people want, and while one or two people may have said in the past that ‘Facebook has this it would be cool if Yahoo did too’ Most of us dont. So how about I give hte Design team the kinds of User specs that would make Yahoo users happy?
But you know I understand your companies team is too stubborn to admit that its not a good direciton and I know its your job to tote it no matter how horrible the idea is, so how about this. Why doesn’t Yahoo let people log into messenger with diffrent emails at once? You guys seem so intent on forcing people to make an email for each account so why not let us have the same functionality we did in a diffrent way, at least until the company tanks, someone new busy it and their first order is to revert back to the old profile system. Still it would be nice to spend the week between then and now with the ability to do the things we came on Yahoo to do.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Yahoo is one amazing company. They keep adding “features” that very few want to their product and basically tell everybody else too bad, we are going to do this no matter what you want, and they pretty much ignore the problems that users report. The business model must be similar to the mortgage banking industry and they are hoping for some sort of bailout. I wonder how big the “golden parachute” upper management will receive when yahoo finally changes hands or tanks?
I have a few suggestions for yahoo that might offset some of the bad feelings that the users have. I know that yahoo won’t do any of these but here they are anyhow. 1. Remove the limit on how many names a user can ignore. 2. Add the ability to use “wildcards” to batch ignore names since quite a few bots and abusers use variations of the same name. 3. Fix the “ignore chat invitation” feature. 4. Gid rid of the “captcha” system, it doesn’t work. If yahoo would actually do something about these issues I know that I would be more accepting of the changes that yahoo is making. I know there are many more issues that others have with messenger and chat, these are just the ones that bug me the most.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I think the inclusion of Yahoo! services on profiles is good. To be honest, I’d never heard of Buzz before reading this post. It’s a shame there’s no UK version because a social news site with regional variations for each country would be great. Yahoo! is very wellknown so if Buzz is promoted well on the Yahoo! homepage, it has a lot of potential.
I think what is needed on the new Profiles, is the ability to display Delicious bookmarks, Yahoo! Answers questions and answers submitted by the user, Yahoo! groups, FlikR photos, and UpComing. I think 360 should be murged with the new profiles, so that a user’s blog forms part of their profile. Another great feature from 360 which could be added is the ability to display posts from your other blogs.
Is Yahoo! still a member of Open Social? If so, will applications soon be available in the new profiles? If so, put the Apps as a separate tab like on Facebook so the profiles won’t take a million years to load.
I think the name Yahoo! Profiles needs to be altered. Replacing 360 with this system and calling it 360 may be better in terms of appeal.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Hi Senior,
Yep, Yahoo! is most definitely part of Open Social and is working on lots of changes, similar to what you’ve mentioned.
Info on Open Social & Yahoo: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/28/yahoo-opens-up-big-time/
Additionally, Ryan over on the Mail blog has done a great job summarizing some of the coming changes for Yahoo!, which you can check out here: http://www.ymailblog.com/blog/2008/11/the-big-picture-behind-yahoo-changes/
As far as changing the name goes, sorry, profiles is here to stay. It’s always been called profiles, and frankly, that’s what it is. It’s not an application it’s just your profile while you’re on the Yahoo! network.
-Melissa
November 11th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
My profile has been “unsearchable” and “cannot be retrieved” for weeks. I have sent 6 emails via the profiles help pages. Half got an autoresponse promising a reply soon, Nothing. others got no response at all. The last one sent 9 Nov was returned as undeliverable. So now even the email help is broken. I don;t really anticipate an answer here either, We’ll see.
Frank H.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
patience every one back off and give it time.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Patience, once again we as a whole expect instant answers !!
November 11th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Patience for something that was not wanted, needed and released half baked ? Riiight!!! No problem. I think quite a few people having been very patient waiting for real issues to be corrected….and they are still waiting.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I hate to say it but Yahoo may have done something right it may not be ideal as full alias profiles but it goes someway to allowing you to be someone else in a Yahoo group. One of the new Group tools is a thing called grouplets this allows you to add extra features to a Yahoo group one of which is a customized Profile feature allowing you to add a unique profile to any group that has activated this feature.
Melissa as this goes a little way to giving people an Alias profile it would be a good idea to let people know here in the Profile blog don’t you think?
Dave
November 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Thanks for your comment, Dave.
If anyone else is interested in learning more about Grouplets, you can check out more information on the Groups blog, here: http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/2008/11/13/where-did-the-groups-labsgrouplets-link-go/
-Melissa
November 11th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
[...] partir de ahora desde los perfiles de Yahoo! Profile será posible seguir los movimientos de tus amigos y seguidores que realicen en Yahoo! [...]
November 11th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Yahoo are amateurs! I can testify to the fact that most of my Yahoo friends (and I had many) have left Yahoo after the new profile induction. They simply don’t use Yahoo Messenger anymore.
It reminds me of the last great exodus when Yahoo wiped out the user rooms without warning back in 2005. Of course people have been steadily leaving ever since then.
But this latest profile blunder may just hammer the final nail in the coffin.
Yahoo, here is a word of advice: When the MAJORITY of customers and users lose their sympathy for your company and especially your product, it’s time to stop and pay attention. Your income, your jobs and your further online existence depends on people wanting to use your stuff. And you have spent the last 4+ years chasing everyone away. What gives?
Well I don’t expect you to change. You didn’t pay the least bit of attention to user complaints all the previous times you messed up. And it’s getting to be a long long list of jaw-dropping blunders by now. I’m beginning to think my 8 year old niece could run your company better than you do. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic!
November 11th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Hey,
I had my profile perfectly polished, now it is GONE. YAHOO STINKS! I see why the stock price in in the toilet and Microsoft has lowered their bid. Yahoo used to be the best for their customers and you are losing that customer service focus.
Baby OH! Baby
November 11th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
can’t we have the old format.. it was more user friendly..i don’t know what to click if i want to view the profile of the person who was sending me messages..
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
would like to get the old format back this new one stinks was just getting used to all the changes and you sir things up again I like to see the profile of whom Im talking too
November 11th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I’m done with yahoo as is alot of other people who I used to talk on yahoo with. I moved all my groups to ning and have did my best to get others to do the same. Yahoo can take a flying leap screw them I say. I’ve never seen any company trying to push a product be so uderly disrespectful to what is their customer base.
November 11th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Melissa,
Yahoo has done it again! More garbage that we ‘mature’ users never wanted. It’s a pain in the a– to have to go in and CHANGE everything so that any schmuck out there can see information about me that I DONT want to share. I’m still not sure if MY privacy is intact. With problems of ’stealing’ identity, etc., I feel that you guys are just adding to the potential problem.
Why, oh why do you keep trying to make it something for kids? They’ve got facebook, myspace and all the other crap sites out there. I came to Yahoo for the simplicity. I came to Yahoo specifically for 360. Now it’s gone tips up, (most of the features doesn’t work) and I went elsewhere to blog. I don’t use Yahoo messenger anymore for much the same reason. Now? You guys have made my decision for me. I’m moving on. As if it matters to anyone at Yahoo corporate.
You all have so very blatantly made it clear that we, your ‘mature’ customers, don’t matter at all. What is WRONG with you all? This is kiddy crap. Are you at all interested in anyone over the age of 30? Buzz up? Gimme a break…..
November 14th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Ro,
I totally understand your concerns about privacy– to check to see how your profile displays to others (to make sure you’re not revealing too much) first log out of the network, and then just go to http://profiles.yahoo.com/YOURID and substitute in your id for YOURID. This will show you what anyone who is NOT a connection sees.
As far as your comment about simplicity goes, I’m a little confused– profiles isn’t too different than 360– similar content, just a different look and feel.
-Melissa
November 30th, 2008 at 1:18 am
“As far as your comment about simplicity goes, I’m a little confused– profiles isn’t too different than 360– similar content, just a different look and feel.” - Seriously, you’re kidding right? I’ve compared this Profile to it and they’re not in the same league. There’s NOTHING to the profile except lists of your various interests and updates when/if you change those lists!? C’mon? There’s no Blog, Photo or Music Sharing! Honestly, 360 was good to go with some updates and tweaks. Everything all-in-one place. This “new” profile seems rather unnecessary in the face of all that.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
You said it Ro, AA slogan comes to mind…………..” KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!”
November 11th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I already have a Facebook page. Give me something that Facebook doesn’t have…like a blog module. Geez, even Mash was better than the new profile system.
Quite frankly, your implementation strategy and communication methods stink. You kept us in the dark all year. Even people like me, who agreed to hang on and be your cheerleaders, are incredibily frustrated. The 360 team blog had a link to my page and for months I would get people asking when the new profile system would come out.
Now that it is finally hear, it has been a bit…underwhelming. I keep waiting for Yahoo to impress me…and I’m still waiting.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Hi Carl,
Profiles is an evolving product– there’s lots more on the product road map, so by no means is the final end result for profiles.
Keep watching and waiting, there’s more to come.
-Melissa
November 21st, 2008 at 10:01 am
That’s all very well and good, but as has been said many times here, forcing the change to an incomplete product that has less functionality, was not a good idea..Hoping people would wait to regain what they had, or even something close? And with no up front notice? I’m not surprised Jerry is stepping down. This was his big thing (near as I can tell), and it seems to have alienated users by the bucketfull. I don’t know the metrics, obviously, but judging just by whats here I’m guessing trends are clear that folks don’t like it. Who knows.
It just seems odd and illogicalto me to ask people to use a service that is “going to be great someday”, rather than debuting it in its mostly great form. Next time, maybe we could get such a courtesy?
I wish you the best and hope your job is secure. All jibes at Yahoo’s shortsighted development process aside, I’m sure its not easy to be a Yahoo at the moment. All the best.
Cheers,
-RS
November 12th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Sorry…not interested in ‘buzzing up’ my profile. buzz is even more lame than that Oprah/Ivillage rip-off ’shine’ crap you guys have. Stop trying to rip off other people’s services. If we wanted them, we wouls be over there instead of over here. JEEZ.
November 12th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Sorry…not interested in ‘buzzing up’ my profile. buzz is even more lame than that Oprah/Ivillage rip-off ’shine’ crap you guys have. Stop trying to rip off other people’s services. If we wanted them, we would be over there instead of over here. JEEZ.
November 12th, 2008 at 2:56 am
Sorry, went back to edit and it posted twice…
November 12th, 2008 at 7:54 am
I hate this new format!!! Yahoo need’s too work on banning the bot’s in the chat rooms once and for all.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Hi Melissa,
I have lost the ability to edit the picture on my profile this week any Idea why?
Is there any way I can turn off the invitations I get to ‘connect’ to other people? This is a facility I do not want as it already exists on Messenger and I am getting invitations from some very dubious sources.
No point me asking ‘customer care’ as they do not reply. Yahoo customer care is a joke and seems to be trying to move itself further and further away from interacting with its customers.
I like the new profiles and I realise that there will be little problems to begin with.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Hi Justine,
Unfortunately, no. At this time, you cannot turn off connections. The only way to prevent connection requests is to make yourself “unsearchable.” You can do this by going to http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/peoplesearch
You can also prevent “repeat connections” or people who are sneaky who repeatedly try to connect with you by blocking them. This prevents them from being able to make future connection requests with you.
-Melissa
November 13th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Hi Melissa,
Not sure what all the BUZZ is about. I can only tell you how frustrating it is to be unable to access my own profile or anyone else’s. I truly don’t care what they look like.but I would really like to be able to access them.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Hi Jim,
Shoot me an email at yprofileblog@yahoo.com outlining your issue– what do you mean by not being able to access your own profile?
-Melissa
November 13th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
We need the old profiles back ASAP. Enough of this childishness!!!
November 14th, 2008 at 7:11 am
How typical “Yahoo”– take a perfectly good feature and muck it up and further drive away your user base, just like you did with Yahoo 360. I used to teach preschoolers who had more creativity and sense than the Yahoo team seems to have. My old profile is gone, and the “new one” seems to be inaccessible, so I can’t do anything with it. Way to go.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Can you tell me when they are going to allow us to transfer our blogs from 360? I think this is the only thing most of us are concerned about.
Thanks,
Chevy
November 15th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
This new profile system bites. When I am chatting and would like to view a profile of someone and it tells me that no information has been added and I know full well that this person has done a profile it makes me mad. I sure hope Yahoo fixes this problem and soon.
November 16th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Weee!
More crap for us to devour. Shows you people continue lack of originality, replicating a service that’s readily available (digg). What’s next? Yitter? Your own replication of micro-blogging Twitter?
Remember when you had PayDirect? Because you wanted to compete against PayPal? And was shut down almost immediately after launch? Then came Yahoo! photos, clubs, player, podcasts, auctions, etc. Which of course no one USED. Which was why it was DISCONTINUED.
Instead of trying so hard to compete with other services why not try to improve the crap you already have?
November 16th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Because that would take Common Sense and this is Yahoo!!!
BWWAAAAAHHHHHHAAAA, the customer is always WRONG!!!!!!! We’ll be returning you to the dark ages as soon as possible…..
December 17th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
What latrine id you dig this crap out of? Listen to your users. Give them what they want.
June 6th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I agree with you whole-heartedly Chevy!!!!
November 17th, 2008 at 11:24 am
je suis la pour faire des ami[e]s et je suis a la recherche une nana .alors ecrit moi si c’est possible… koodje@yahoo.com merci