Yahoo! is to follow in the footsteps of popular 'social news' sites like Digg by allowing its users to vote on which stories should appear on the homepage.

While browsing the web, Yahoo! users will be able to send messages to the site when they discover content they like, and Yahoo! will in turn compute the information and update its home page to reflect their tastes.

The announcement of Yahoo! Buzz, which is expected to be launched this week, represents an attempt by Jerry Yang, Yahoo!'s chief executive, to open up the site to third-party publishers and give it the flavour of a social network that draws from collective intelligence of its users.

So far about a hundred publishers, including newspapers like The New York Times and USA Today, as well as magazines like Newsweek and The Economist, have agreed to place 'Buzz buttons' next to stories on their sites which, when clicked, will register a vote for the story with Yahoo!'s engine.

The more votes a story receives, the more prominently it will be displayed on Yahoo!'s Buzz site, although an editorial team at Yahoo! will have the final say over which stories appear.

This, Yahoo! believes, will guard against articles being displayed that are indecent or violent, or which may amount to a breach of the law, as happened last year when a popular revolt on the 'news aggregator' site Digg.com resulted in the site running dozens of stories which explained how to overcome software designed to prevent the copying of HD-DVDs.

The first phase of the Buzz launch involves the release of Yahoo! 'widgets' that publishers can embed on their sites and on which users can click if they like a story. Tapan Bhat, vice president of Front Doors at Yahoo!, has said, however, that he envisages a future where Yahoo!'s portal could also be customised for individual users based on stories they have voted for over time.

Buzz represents one of the most significant initiatives announced by Jerry Yang since taking over as chief executive eight months ago, and comes as the company continues its attempts to fight off a hostile $45 billion takeover bid by Microsoft.

In a related change, Yahoo! has also updated its search engine to give more detail in individual results. For instance, a result for a restaurant will now include direct links to the reservations page - something that is already offered by Google.

Investors and analysts may ultimately shrug their shoulders at Buzz, given that the idea of rating news according to popular vote has been employed for years by sites like Digg and Reddit.

But publishers will have a strong incentive to participate in the project, given the inherent value of having their story close to the top of a page that is visited globally by 181 million people each month.

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