I’m glad to announce that Guest Blogger, Yuvi Panda, has hopped on board the Techzi tram-line, and will be covering all things Microsoft/Programming related. Here’s Yuvi’s first post, along with a few edits from myself and my thoughts at the end.

Unlike the title suggests, it’s not a clone as such, as there are currently, four of these Microsoft Reddit style bookmarking websites. One in French, one in Norweigian, and two in Dutch, if our (that is to say myself, and David’s) limited language identification skills prove correct.

The interface is pretty simple, quite colorful and the buttons are all true web 2.0 style gels! And, of course there are the usual comments, tags and RSS feeds without which no website can launch nowadays… The Microsoft offering is not a Digg clone however, like many before it, but a Reddit clone. Why, you ask? Because you can vote both stories up and down, and there’s even a graphical bar showing the ratio of “Up”s to “Down”s.

As of now, I spotted some stories with more than a thousand ups, and LiveSide
reports that traffic has been quite good, with some 800,000 visitors in the second month. Second Month! Seriously people, where is the hype? Where’s the link love? A Technorati Search returns just 24 inbound links, which is less than the number of links for my blog! C’mon people, show em the link luv!

My hypothesis is that the folks at Microsoft Europe did this themselves, and it seems that not many folks at Microsoft Redmond know of this. So, when are we going to see an English version of this?

This post has been written by Techzi Guest Blogger, Yuvi Panda.

Editor’s Notes: On the contrary Yuvi, I believe that Bill knows exactly what’s going on here, and is actually being very clever in what he’s doing. With so many English language Reddit/Digg type clones already out, what the Internet lacks is variety of choice in various other languages. The fact that lesser-spoken European languages are being focused on by Microsoft shows real commitment & dedication, and is also a great way to test their services & get some feedback, without being flamed by the major Web 2.0/Internet blogs. I think Microsoft will launch the English version, as and when they’ve had time to analyze the data, statistics & feedback they have currently, so that they can work on the fundamental algorithms running the site, making it what it is, and hopefully by the time an English version launches, it should be fairly spam-proof, secure and already have a spiffy, usable design & layout. - David Wilkinson.