Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Robsteranium — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:18:23 -0000

I think those links need updating to:
http://video.seesmic.com/th...
http://video.seesmic.com/th...

First video I've ever seen that was interrupted while the presenter fed his baby!

I'd be interested to learn how Techmeme compiles related stories into common threads. Common keywords, links to source sites, perhap it's manually edited... any suggestions?

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Brad Phillips — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:07:30 -0000

We knew you'd figure it out Robert!

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

home school information — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:17:24 -0000

The average user would might think that taking the time to complete webpages on this topic of thought is a waste of resources.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Ron — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:06:42 -0000

meant to say "take TechCrunch for example"

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Ron — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:31:46 -0000

@43. I'm sure most bloggers that blog for the love of it are as you describe. But I think tje mpre popular you get, the more you care about your "ranking" than your accuracy. Take TV for example. Last week they report as "fact" the alleged China/Baidu issue whocj makes it to the top of Techmeme. The story was based totally on unattributed amecdotal emails. And was disputed by anecdotal comments in the post. The author then says the story is "true" because an unnamed spokesperson from Google said they "received reports" and that was based on a link. The author made no attempt to contact Google Choms Yahoo Microsoft or Baidu. No fact checking beyond supposed private emails. Buy tjere it sat at the top of Techmeme as "news"

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Mark Evans — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:19:46 -0000

Robert,
In general, I don't watch a lot of videos but both of your Techmeme videos were compelling. Not sure if you totally nailed the "Techmeme Secret Sauce" but you did a nice job explaining how it works. Well done.

Mark

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

BenN — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:02:22 -0000

I wonder if these comments would be here if I had written "first!" instead...

@Dawn: "I thought the blogosphere was supposed to be the great equalizer, the “level playing field” - Er. The Internet was kinda a level playing field at the start. A bunch of people posting text and basically chatting to each other, except some people got listened to more than others. Then there were webpages, and anyone with a small amount of webspace from their ISP or geocites could host some pages, except some pages got more views than others. Blogging came along and that took it back to the start where anyone could write a blog, except some people's blogs are read more than others. Techmeme capitalises on the blogs that are read more than the others.

Where Techmeme then goes with blogs, Google already did with Webpages - the popular blogs/sites chose the next set of popular blogs/websites. If you're unpopular, you've gotta get noticed by the big guys (or a LOT of small guys) to get popular. And I'd imagine Scoble and all of the other big guys disagreeing with this, but it's unfortunately true.

Anyway, once you've got that 'popularity', you've got to work to keep it. Scoble did for a while and has now re-prioritised, which is fine. One day, all the big guys will move on to other things, at which point there'll be room for some different blogs to appear on Techmeme (the news aggregator site). Of course, by then blogging might have turned out to be a rather long-lasting fad...

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Michael — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:11:41 -0000

Robert,

I have no ill feelings for you because you've moved on to other things that interest you. You had asked why people thought your comment volume had decreased.

My point was that you moved on. That's cool! But I do miss the content you were known for before.

Best of luck.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Ron — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:04:04 -0000

@38. Surely you are not suggesting your local newspaper is a news aggregator. If so them its editor should be fired, Of course there is newsservice content I'm local newspaper . But that's based more on economies of scale. And at the end of the day the newspaper has accountibility. Not sure where the accountibility in techneme is

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Orville Chomer — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:38:23 -0000

Robert: I'd love to see these videos but the seesmic player loads up but will not play the video for me (at work). Your Podtech player works fine as well as Kyte. Is there a way you can put the videos there as well? :)

Orville

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

krsnaKhandelwal — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:10:58 -0000

Going reverse is not bad if the fellow can come back with a few desired amendments.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

anilp — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:44:14 -0000

I expected you to describe the basic algorithm and math. Frankly, there was little content in your videos, and they suggest you don't understand the math.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:29:36 -0000

Lolcatz@6

Of course C9 is on Techmeme, it is a sponsor - check out the right hand side of techmeme.com

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Dawn D. — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:11:12 -0000

I'm glad you read those feeds, Robert. I trust you to do that. And I hope you're always on the lookout for new feeds, too.

I don't mean to be difficult, nor disparaging to Techmeme, for that matter. This is just something that I struggle with myself. If I point to certain cartoonists as the most popular, then it becomes a self-fulfilling circle of attention that can easily become impenetrable. That's not fair to new artists or to readers either.

The weighting thing does bother me, because there is already a built-in favoritism towards established players.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Andru Edwards — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:40:20 -0000

Robert, I watched both video in their entirety. Good stuff. I put up my thoughts on both the videos and Techmeme on my site:

http://www.andruedwards.com...

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Steve Spalding — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:27:41 -0000

After reading some of the comments, I can understand the hostility.

Pick your battles though Robert.

-I- was not -trying- to attack you. In fact, I was agreeing with you. No, seriously, I was. As hard to believe as that might be. There was no veiled attack, no patronizing, no bull...hockey. I really was agreeing with your assessment about how Techmeme works.

Since it is a rare day when I agree with anything, I suppose that I can see the confusion.

I'm not going to leave the snarky close that responses like "whatever" usually draw but come on now. Don't get so used to attacks that you start seeing them where they don't exist.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Robert Scoble — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:18:54 -0000

Steve: whatever. I am seeing that I'm looking like an asshole cause I'm trying to explain how things work.

Dawn: it's not democratic. TechMeme just is watching who gets to the top of the attention scale.

For a content producer sites like Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, Techmeme, Google News, YCombinator are good for us: they bring us highly focused traffic.

But notice that I still read 900+ feeds. Why is that? Maybe I agree with you that TechMeme is going to have too much power if we don't provide alternatives? Hmmm. :-)

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Dawn D. — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:57:31 -0000

Okay, but if aggregating, judging and displaying the links of others is all that's necessary to be the best news site on the Internet, it makes me wonder why anybody would continue to be a schmuck and spend their time and money to actually go to meetings and conventions, interview people, write up articles, or draw on white boards at 2am.

Seems to me that this system is fortifying Techmeme and the bigger sites that earn advertising revenue, and everybody else is being hosed. I don't see how people newer to blogging can compete, even if they have better content, when Techmeme is weighting blogs.

I thought the blogosphere was supposed to be the great equalizer, the "level playing field." That sure didn't last long, did it? Now instead of your local newspaper judging what (who) is newsworthy enough for your attention, there's Techmeme.

How is this better? How is this less elitist than the New York Times? How is this the great democratization of news?

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Joe Duck — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:02:17 -0000

if they want to sell themselves out for better “rankings” and visibility, nothing stops them

I think this is one of those common notions about bloggers that is for the most part very wrong. Blogging is only lucrative for a tiny minority of bloggers and although you are right people like to be "read" and also most are not immune to the fact that blogs have indirect commercial benefits, I think the kind of blog that appear on TechMeme pretty much adhere voluntarily to a reasonable standard of journalistic integrity. The neat thing in blogging is that policing abuse and B.S. is as close as the nearest ... internet.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Steve Spalding — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:27:13 -0000

This is a more defensive sort of response than I was expecting. No matter, it's likely you misunderstood what I was saying and decided it was some kind of veiled attack. Either way, to the points.

1. Adbrite is running PPP ads on my site? Interestingly enough that doesn't bother me. Not that I use PPP, but I also am not against it. I would go in and manually delete those ads, but considering the semi-arbitrary nature of how they are placed, you might as well be balking at Adsense (which I think also runs PPP ads every now and then, darn that Google).

Also, not a really fair way to argue -- is it? Setting up a Straw Man and then trying to tear down my credibility? Dirty pool.

2. It was a post written as a response to someone asking about how Techmeme might work (not as Techmeme bait). It was based almost exclusively on anecdotal evidence (much like your claims). Confidence should be reserved for something a little more solid than anecdote, non?

3. Exactly, I said similar -points-. I didn't say the medium was similar.

4. Robert, that is an assertion based on nothing. I read a terribly large number of blogs, feeds, etc...

5. Why do I feel a touch of hostility?

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Robert Scoble — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:52:37 -0000

Steve: you have PayPerPost ads on your blog. Automatic deletion from anyone, or any algorithm, who considers authority and credibility ranking. Sorry.

Also, your headline isn't confident.

Also, you didn't use video to explain your points.

Also, you haven't spent four years reading thousands of feeds. Far less credibility in the system about things regarding feed reading.

Like I said in the video, it isn't a fair system. Or maybe it is! :-)

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Robert Scoble — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:50:10 -0000

Michael: I have +not+ dropped Facebook.

I also was into Twitter BEFORE I got into Facebook.

Facebook is arguably THE biggest story in the tech industry since Google. So, the fact that I spent so much time on it for so long should tell you something.

I always knew that people would drop me if I stopped focusing on my blog. I made an explicit decision to do just that and it's paid off big time for me. I have a video show now which gets about a million downloads a month and has a sponsor that's profitable for me. I also have, in that time that my blog's quality gone down, become the #1 Google Reader user in the world (according to the Google Reader team) and that, too, is getting me a new following. I have the only real alternative to TechMeme in my link blog.

And there's a lot more to come.

I just talked with an executive at Facebook and he said he's noticed the same thing: he's spending more and more time over on Twitter having conversations there.

As to celebrity status: if I ever bought that hype, I'm sorry. It's not worth anything. What is worth it? Having a great conversation with smart people. I had one today and I'm looking forward to having another one tomorrow. All the rest of this stuff is crap and you can quote me on that.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Steve Spalding — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:39:05 -0000

Good points Robert, though I say this with a touch of sour grapes.

Considering I did a similar analysis of Techmeme, with many of the same points no less than 10 days ago but, alas, no Techmeme love for me.

I suppose it just goes to show that our theory of how Techmeme works is more valid than not.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Robert Scoble — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:30:00 -0000

Dawn: the front page of my local newspaper includes news from other newspapers and from Associated Press.

TechMeme +is+ a news site because it aggregates/judges/displays news better than any other site on the Internet.

Re: Reverse Engineering TechMeme

Michael — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:36:52 -0000

Here's my POV on your decline and drop in comments count.

1. You used to cover many subjects and provide access to many software companies and people that I couldn't talk to without you or someone like you being there.
2. You became a Facebook zealot and everything was about Facebook for months. You covered little else. You appeared to be more of an evangelist for Facebook and objectively looking at the marketplace.
3. You then dropped Facebook and moved on to twitter. Again evangelizing Twitter on a constant basis and dropping your coverage of software and technology companies.
4. Last and this is more of a feeling, but I think you were consumed by your own celebrity status. You thought that people would keep tuning in when quality and variety dropped.

I don't know that this is accurate for anyone else. But this is what I saw and why I went from reading your blog daily to maybe once a week if I catch something interesting on Techmeme.

Thanks for the good insight and access you provided in the past.