Yahoo Buzz's closure on April 21 almost goes unnoticed

Yahoo's experiment with social news will end this week, but almost nobody noticed its demise. A message was posted to the Yahoo Buzz website back on April 4 stating the company's plans to close the site, but it wasn't until Monday morning that news sites picked up on the news.

"As of [April 21], you will be unable to access the Yahoo! Buzz site. This was a hard decision," the company wrote. "However this will help us focus on our core strengths and new innovations. We appreciate your patronage." The shift seems to further suggest that Internet users are increasingly moving away from the fad that was social news.

Buzz was launched in early 2008, aiming to compete with Digg. At the time, Digg was one of the leading social news sites, and often for publishers being "digged" meant a nice boost in traffic. Buzz quickly grew and even surpassed Digg at times in total traffic, but that didn't last long.

As Facebook and Twitter grew, the need for a separate site to share news lessened. Digg's traffic has seen a sharp dropoff, and other social news sites have either scaled back or shut down altogether. Rumors that Buzz was likely to shut down were confirmed in December of last year, when it and seven other Yahoo owned properties were marked for termination as part of a broader restructuring.

In the end, it may become a question of whether anybody really truly cared. "Even in its heyday, when Buzz was sending obscene amounts of traffic to sites that were voted popular, it still seemed no one but hardcore social news junkies was talking about it," Devindra Hardawar wrote for VentureBeat on Monday.