more importantly, when is bitchmeme launching already?
Jay Cuthrell
· 1 year ago
+1
mager
· 1 year ago
Love it
Anthony Farrior
· 1 year ago
Glad you expanded during these economic times, yet, saddened since techmeme was the one place I could trust was propelled by math only. ;) Looking forward to the human touch...
Bruce
· 1 year ago
The opportunity wrt "automation" is, and has always been, in finding the right use modes (stoires? use cases?) for human/machine collaboration, on both the production and consumption sides. Anyone who thinks automation can/should do it all is missing the point. Always has, will for a long time to come. Having said that, envisioning/creating the interesting use-cases is a non-trivial task, here as elsewhere.
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Yep, and we've always had intricate manual "configurations" that affected the kind of headlines that would appear. What's changed here is we're editing on a per-headline basis now.
Don Dodge
· 1 year ago
Great move! Megan is a great writer and will do a great job as an editor.
TechMeme is the first site I check every morning...and throughout the day. It is the best tech news aggregator, and will now be even better. You guys are the best.
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Very glad to hear that Don. We're expecting good things.
Mark Bean
· 1 year ago
Does this mean more or less TechCrunch articles on Techmeme?
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Dunno, maybe a wash! (BTW, I'll bet that you're a blogger!)
Mark Bean
· 1 year ago
More like a microblogger. I run a small consulting business. I am excited to see what stories are featured in the future. Good luck.
Evan Brown
· 1 year ago
It’s good to see some flesh and blood being added to the news aggregation process. Having a human editor doing some manual corrections should make the news headlines on Techmeme even more relevant.
Saad Kamal
· 1 year ago
I think its a good move. All the best :)
I love Techmeme..and when I first read the title of this post..I thought "SHYT...techmeme must be closing down..."
bpm140
· 1 year ago
Congrats, Gabe, on making a great service even better. Megan is great people, so I'm glad you are working together.
Loic Lemeur
· 1 year ago
good post Gabe.
Mark Collier
· 1 year ago
Whatever works. I heart techmeme.
I noticed Fred Wilson's posts are suddenly back on Techmeme regularly. And that ain't a bad thing.
Jeremy Pepper
· 1 year ago
Less TechMeme, more WeSmirch and upgrade and update politics!
Oh, and congrats to Megan. :)
Dan Cornish
· 1 year ago
Great news! This is how we used to build a daily newsletter I sent out to 30,000 per day. The contraction of the ad market in 2001 made me quite, but it is a far better way to go. http://blog.cosential.com/?p=179
Daniel Ha
· 1 year ago
Very cool. Congrats on the new hire!
JoeDuck
· 1 year ago
Great choice and good luck to Megan in the new role. And by the way, please tell Anna Nicole Smith to get well soon, OK?
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
You see, this is why we need to do a better job with the news. :-)
buzztap
· 1 year ago
I think this is a great move...it will be interesting to see how the masses perceive the inclusion of a human editor vs. a completely automated approach.
I personally think an automated+human combo is the best model for news delivery.
michaelgalpert
· 1 year ago
awesome gabe. looking fwd to techmeme 2.0 or is it cool to say 3.0 now?
Susan Kitchens
· 1 year ago
Would LOVE to see a techmeme-style site to cover economics, Gabe. Tis the season.
Eric Eldon
· 1 year ago
We want a finance news aggregator! We want a finance news aggregator! We want a finance news aggregator!
I'm tired of sorting through my folder of finance and econ feeds in my RSS reader for interesting stuff.
davemc500hats
· 1 year ago
we tried that. Gabe didn't think it worked very well. I'm still a holdout, but I understand his concerns / criticisms.
anyway, don't u need a job? if Gabe did FinMeme too well, you'd be out on your ass eric :)
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Nope, we tried PERSONAL finance. That's different!
Chris
· 1 year ago
The creator must join with its creation, eh?
I think it's a good trend. One question that interests me is whether this is the correct thing to do only now, or whether, in retrospect it might have been the correct thing to do in the past.
You know what they say... the best compliment is addiction. :)
matthew_dippel
· 1 year ago
One of the things I've liked about your sites is the fact that they're *not* perfect. Algorithms can't be taught political correctness or compassion as your Anna Nicole grouping demonstrates. But when Techmeme "gets it wrong" with technology stories, it actually allows a reader, very quickly, to see the evolution of a particular topic. I found it great for reading about the recent Yahoo!/Microsoft developments because the chaos on the page mirrored reality. One story talked about everything breaking down while the one just below it talked about how angry Flickr users were, while the one below that talked about Jerry Yang asking for more money while further down a story indicated that things were moving along and the deal would probably close. The resulting contradictions actually told a story of the giant mess that ended up being the outcome. I don't think any other site truly captured that situation like Techmeme's algorithm did.
All of that aside, I love the site. It's a model of efficiency. In one minute I can see what the latest trend or outbreak in my industry is. I visit Techmeme a few times a day and it's replaced most of the noisy blog aggregation sites. I can see how a human touch could make things a little cleaner, but keep the edits very light ... don't discount the story that is told by "related chaos".
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Thanks. Interesting. Though wrong may be right for you, I believe wrong is usually wrong for more people. Right? :-)
garazy
· 1 year ago
Hi Gabe,
I have the same problems magically grouping stories on twitlinks.com. Glad I am not the only one.
Gary
iankennedy
· 1 year ago
Congrats to Megan - look forward to seeing the benefits of her human touch!
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Me too! Hey, how can I get an N97 sample?!
sarah
· 1 year ago
This is a great move, and congrats on the continued evolutionof the site. My biggest hope is that your team will try to keep personal biases and "friendships" out of the equation of determining what's newsworthy. That's what killed Valleywag for me...too much self-congratulatory banter and coverage for a select few and not enough real variety. This industry is very, very interesting with a lot of great voices and personalities outside of the proclaimed celebs (bloggers and execs alike).
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Sarah, no problem. We dislike everybody.
John Furrier
· 1 year ago
I remember Megan I think that she worked at Techcrunch...or AllThingsD...was it GigaOm... ok it was Venturebeat...no it was ...
I got it ...she was the founder of PodTech...Bingo
John Furrier
· 1 year ago
Seriously congrats Megan. With a name like McCarthy you're good in my book. See you around
charlieanzman
· 1 year ago
Kudos Gabe and crew. Keep it comin' !
gbattle
· 1 year ago
I've had the pleasure of studying (ok, reverse engineering) most of the good automated news services and always enjoyed yours as it takes some smart shortcuts to implicitly measure popularity, similarity, freshness and reputation. The interesting thing to me is how long you held out against a curatorial/editorial layer, when literally every other automated/social aggregator has an editorial layer for their front page (even if they claim not to - they most certainly do, they can't afford not to).
The only part I'm disappointed by is that you aren't being nearly as creative about how to implement a behavioral overlay for the curatorial/editorial function. There are some ingenious ways to accomplish this out there already. Not to diminish the need for a true editor, and your choice is stellar - the buck must stop somewhere - but there are so many ways to combat algorithmic inertia and false positive outliers.
Jeremiah Owyang
· 1 year ago
More Zebras please
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Hah. Who's the zebra now?
PBCliberal
· 1 year ago
We knew the first time an automated rule-based typesetting system hyphenated figurine that external non-machine intelligence would always need to be brought to the table. High level man-machine interface is definitely our next frontier, whether its organizing story selection facts to present quickly and succinctly to a human editor, or a direct brain interface that replaces first the pointing device and then the search engine.
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
Exactly.
Andy Sternberg
· 1 year ago
Great call. without a little human intervention, anything automated will be gamed. Congrats Megan.
m0nty
· 1 year ago
Congrats to Megan. I would love to see what the screen that she uses to vote things up and down looks like. I can only imagine. Probably not as sexy-looking as I think though. ;)
So Gabe, when are you going to whitelabel the memeo tech? It shouldn't be that hard to do. With the addition of human editors, it's the next logical step IMO. Of course, you would have your own thoughts on the matter.
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
The interface is kinda cool. Low tech in some ways. High tech in others.
Whitelabel? Ask me in 3 years!
m0nty
· 1 year ago
Three years?!? You said that three years ago! :P
howardlindzon
· 1 year ago
smart now you can help me do a stock one. lets build it for stocktwits.
GabeRivera
· 1 year ago
That seems to be a theme in this thread!
steepdecline
· 1 year ago
And I was just wondering how a TechMeme story managed to find it's way to the top today :)
Serious love for Techmeme already and just look at the best commenter thread anywhere... congrats on making my most used site even better Gabe!
machine with humans... I think you might be on to something :P
k8cpa
· 1 year ago
The truth is Memeorandum is a San Francisco Liberal owned, Meme tag scanner, that has just enough Conservative Blogs to keep the Conservative Blogging community from complaining about it.
I've posted great entries on my Blog, only to have it ignored by Gabe's bullshit service.
Gabe, get real or better yet, get lost and turn your code over to someone who's a-Political.
James Joyner
· 1 year ago
Gabe, It's mildly amusing that you're doing this so shortly after the big Guardian piece saying how much better Memeorandum is than Google News at doing the aggregation.
Still, likely the right call. I'm generally pleased with the selection of stories at the three that I use (Memeorandum, Techmeme, and WeSmirch) but do find the groupings of stories within memes and especially the choice of blogs linking to said stories rather random.
Phil Sim
· 1 year ago
Glad to see you finally saw the light, Gabe!
I'm sure it will make Techmeme ever better and I'm guessing will assist the expansion into other niches, no?
alik
· 11 months ago
News aggregators suck ! I just Can't wait to see the new design.
Johny
· 11 months ago
and why do they suck ? ^_-
alik
· 11 months ago
because the caracteristics of a news aggregator, based on a swarm of stolen posts, easily addable on a short period of time, gives us the annoyance which covers vast topics of need. strange enough, the little lamb got scared and opened his mouth....
Simon Watd
· 11 months ago
I think the real job is to find a nice medium...as social powered news sites such as Digg.com don't really provide great news either!
All Comments
TechMeme is the first site I check every morning...and throughout the day. It is the best tech news aggregator, and will now be even better. You guys are the best.
I love Techmeme..and when I first read the title of this post..I thought "SHYT...techmeme must be closing down..."
I noticed Fred Wilson's posts are suddenly back on Techmeme regularly. And that ain't a bad thing.
Oh, and congrats to Megan. :)
And by the way, please tell Anna Nicole Smith to get well soon, OK?
I personally think an automated+human combo is the best model for news delivery.
I'm tired of sorting through my folder of finance and econ feeds in my RSS reader for interesting stuff.
anyway, don't u need a job?
if Gabe did FinMeme too well, you'd be out on your ass eric :)
I think it's a good trend. One question that interests me is whether this is the correct thing to do only now, or whether, in retrospect it might have been the correct thing to do in the past.
http://broadstuff.com/archives/1391-Social-vs-A...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcuthrell/2988532013/
:)
:)
All of that aside, I love the site. It's a model of efficiency. In one minute I can see what the latest trend or outbreak in my industry is. I visit Techmeme a few times a day and it's replaced most of the noisy blog aggregation sites. I can see how a human touch could make things a little cleaner, but keep the edits very light ... don't discount the story that is told by "related chaos".
I have the same problems magically grouping stories on twitlinks.com. Glad I am not the only one.
Gary
I got it ...she was the founder of PodTech...Bingo
The only part I'm disappointed by is that you aren't being nearly as creative about how to implement a behavioral overlay for the curatorial/editorial function. There are some ingenious ways to accomplish this out there already. Not to diminish the need for a true editor, and your choice is stellar - the buck must stop somewhere - but there are so many ways to combat algorithmic inertia and false positive outliers.
So Gabe, when are you going to whitelabel the memeo tech? It shouldn't be that hard to do. With the addition of human editors, it's the next logical step IMO. Of course, you would have your own thoughts on the matter.
Whitelabel? Ask me in 3 years!
Serious love for Techmeme already and just look at the best commenter thread anywhere...
congrats on making my most used site even better Gabe!
machine with humans... I think you might be on to something :P
I've posted great entries on my Blog, only to have it ignored by Gabe's bullshit service.
Gabe, get real or better yet, get lost and turn your code over to someone who's a-Political.
Still, likely the right call. I'm generally pleased with the selection of stories at the three that I use (Memeorandum, Techmeme, and WeSmirch) but do find the groupings of stories within memes and especially the choice of blogs linking to said stories rather random.
I'm sure it will make Techmeme ever better and I'm guessing will assist the expansion into other niches, no?