techmeme

I’ve noticed that PR types are getting very astute with dealing with bloggers lately and getting their wares discussed on TechMeme.

Anyone who's followed Techmeme knows TechCrunch and Michael Arrington should be at the top of any list of authors and story sources for the blog aggregating site. Vik Singh thought it would be interesting to make those lists.

Tim O’Reilly has a great post up on O’Reilly Radar, in which he talks about what might be called (although he doesn’t use the term) the “stupidity of crowds.” Using the meltdown in quantitative hedge funds, Facebook apps and Techmeme.com as examples, he talks about how too many people chasing the same idea causes a decline in the value of that idea. As he puts it:

This isn't a discussion that will necessarily have a neat conclusion – that's sort of the nature of debate. But A-list bloggers dogpiled on the value, or lack there of, of headlining on TechMeme, and branched out to a more robust discussion about the value of quality (lesser, niche) traffic over the pounding servers get when headlining elsewhere.

I’ve noticed this several times and thought I’d bring it up. TechMeme seems to penalize bloggers who link to other bloggers. Most bloggers believe that a major part of how TechMeme decides which is the most important story is to count links. That isn’t true in following mine, and other people’s results. I believe there’s a “linking penalty” on TechMeme. At least it seems that way after doing my own link counting. Let’s say there’s three stories.

Q&A With Gabe Rivera, Creator Of Techmeme Techmeme may be the singlemost significant news site I've found in the last five years. There is no single source on the internet that does a faster more relevant snapshot view of what is happening in the world of tech than Techmeme.

Kevin Burton released a new TailRank. Last week I asked the audience at ConvergeSouth how many people even knew about TechMeme. Very few hands went up.