Yahoo Inc. this week added new elements to the social beta version of its Yahoo Buzz social news site, which identifies the top news and blog on the basis of votes and search patterns.

On Thursday, Yahoo announced that it has added the ability to include elements of a Yahoo universal profile on the site, emphasizing the connections of his friend. The update expands on the Yahoo Open Strategy which aims at the opening of all platforms from Yahoo and data to third parties, and expanding the availability of social characteristics.

A new section on updates Buzz allow users to more easily find the content of his friends voted for Buzz on the site, said Yahoo. In addition, Yahoo has added a report that allows users to respond and provide a thumbs up or thumbs down to comments from other users.

Finally, Yahoo added an extension of permission-based activity center that allows users to access and view a summary of profile and history of votes of his fellow users, Yahoo said. The center also shows the number of times a user was the first person to vote or submit a story, the most recent stories have voted and the comments that have been written, according to Yahoo.

Yahoo Buzz launched for the first time in February, prompting many observers to say the industry as a “clone of Digg.” The site was selected available to users before it was opened to all publishers in August.

Adam Ostrow, a blogger at Mashable, noted that the updates that Buzz look even more like Digg, Yahoo, but with most major user base in mind.

“These new features are interesting for a couple of reasons,” he added. “First, show the potential of the strategy of Yahoo Open - Buzz users essentially become Yahoo universal horizon, helping to create a huge social network behind the scenes. It is starting to be increasingly clear that Yahoo Buzz was added to maintain the same features as Digg, as it did when it launched its security section and comes a few months ago. ”

Yahoo Buzz, he added, appears to be a bright spot for the company, which has been in a precarious situation this week after Google Inc. veered away from advertising a proposed agreement between the two. After the announcement from Google, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said that an acquisition by Microsoft Corp. might be the best for the company.

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