{"id":3058,"date":"2009-02-23T20:43:27","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T04:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wapreview.com\/?p=3058"},"modified":"2010-11-05T10:29:26","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T17:29:26","slug":"buzzwire-wants-to-be-the-mobile-digg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/3058\/","title":{"rendered":"Buzzwire Wants to be the Mobile Digg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Buzzwire There have been numerous attempts at duplicating the success of Digg on the mobile web.\u00a0 Mobile sites like Admob owned TapTap<\/a> along with bMarks<\/a>, Mobilised<\/a> and Tappity <\/a> copy the basic Digg model of a crowd sourced URL sharing recommendation engine.\u00a0 These sites seem to be getting a fair amount of traffic although none of four has anything like Digg’s name recognition.<\/p>\n

Buzzwire, <\/strong><\/em>a new service at m.buzzwire.com<\/a> which was launched today, aims to change that.\u00a0 Buzzwire, as a\u00a0 company, is not new to mobile. Up to now they have been mainly known for streaming video and audio subscription\u00a0 services delivered through mobile operator portals.\u00a0 Buzzwire’s carrier partners include Verizon and AT&T and the company has received $16 million<\/a> in series A and B funding.<\/p>\n

The new Buzzwire URL sharing site is off portal. It works a little differently than Digg.\u00a0 Like Digg, users submit URLs that they like or think are newsworthy. But,unlike Digg, there is no equivalent to the “Digg” or “Bury” voting system where other users can\u00a0 rate submitted URLs.\u00a0 Buzzwire displays the top 10 URLs on its home page and in separate top 20 lists for topics like News & Politics, Sports, Gadgets and Gaming.\u00a0 It’s not clear what the criteria are for including a URL in one of the top lists.\u00a0 The only metric of URL popularity that appears on Buzzwire is number of views,\u00a0 but the number of views doesn’t seem to match the order of the sites in the top lists. The New York Times is reporting<\/a> that Buzzwire has four editors “who also cull articles”\u00a0 so perhaps the top lists are picked by editors rather than algorithmically.<\/p>\n

Submitting a site to Buzzwire is by SMS or Email.\u00a0 That’s great if your browser allows you to share the current page by email or SMS, but not all mobile browsers do. Buzzwire also offers a “Buzzle Button<\/em>” that mobile web publishers can add to their sites.\u00a0 Users click a site’s Buzzle Button to submit the page to Buzzwire.<\/p>\n

My favorite way to posting URLs to sites like Buzzwire is with a bookmarklet. Opera Mini and Mobile, Palm Blazer and Mobile Internet Explorer all support bookmarklets. Most of the other mobile URL sharing services suppy bookmarklets that provide one click URL submission.\u00a0 I couldn’t find a Buzzwire bookmarlet so I created one.\u00a0 For desktop browsers, drag this link,\u00a0 Add to Buzzwire<\/a><\/em><\/strong> to the browser toolbar.\u00a0 For mobile Browsers, visit my mobile bookmarklets page at o.yeswap.com<\/a> and follow the instructions to add the bookmarklet to your browser.<\/p>\n

\"Buzzwire Buzzwire is an attractive, easy to navigate site.\u00a0 The stories on the front page are generally interesting and “buzz”-worthy.\u00a0 I want to like Buzzwire but there are a couple of things about it that\u00a0 bother me.<\/p>\n