Buzz, Yahoo’s Digg-like effort to leverage reader gestures and third party content in determining the most popular news, removes it’s barriers to entry tonight.

Until now only a hundred or so invited publishers could post news to Buzz. This was a big plug – Yahoo pushes a few Yahoo Buzz stories to their home page every day, resulting in huge, server-melting traffic surges to the lucky third party sites. Starting tonight, the invitation requirement is gone, and anyone can submit their stories to Buzz.

It’s hard to compare Buzz to Digg. Like AOL’s Propeller, they chose to add editorial discretion in determining headlines to reduce gaming. That also seems to make users less interested in participating, though. In Yahoo’s case the fact that they promote headline stories on the home page of Yahoo gives them a huge traffic boost, which skews results.

Stories can be submitted here.