Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Buguldey — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 14:06:02 -0000

However, "popular" in the scope of certain tags (i.e. within a tag/keyword used by smart/intelligent/wise people) means "fantastic, relevant, productive, excellent". Please proceed. Anyone silly would mention Meyrink? Anyone silly would mention Arvo Part? Anyone silly would mention Dostoevsky, Tarkovsky, Ontology learning and automatic knowledge acquisition, just to name a few? Choose *your* tags.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Buguldey — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 13:52:49 -0000

Unfortunately, the above comments are irrelevant and misleading.

Bottomline:

Guys subscribe to "popular" stuff ("popular" means silly, since 95-99% of the Earth's population *is* silly) and complain that they receive irrelevant content.

Subscribe to your personal keywords and tags, you'll get a fantastic growth of personal performance and satisfaction. You'll just get it, just think a bit. It's always good to think some more.

Delicious/rss/popular/sometag and Delicious/rss/tag/sometag is one of such sources I'd recommend. +feedster the same, +technorati watchlists the same. I am also seeking for better ways, there must be some. Web 2.0 researchers and academia don't sleep too, just watch/subscribe to their ideas, and you'll learn how to benefit. There are keywords/tags for such subscriptions.

Good luck.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

CetaMac — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 16:40:02 -0000

Is there any difference to blogroll?

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

David Gibbons — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 15:34:56 -0000

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,650,000 for "blog aggregator"

potato - pot-aato - this is a semmantic issue Robert

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Thomas Purves — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 16:29:33 -0000

Sigh, it's true if big media didn't exist, it Would have to be invented. When there is no scarcity of content it’s the filter that creates value not the content creators. Google created value by the results it *doesn’t* return. But this has been true forever, content creators have long been in the business of controlling the channel (manufacturing hits), not the business of making media. It’s all about controlling the top 40 rotation (and not more than 40) it’s all about constraining what gets distributed. The prize is massive, see that research piece linked to in boingboing, Slashdot today (http://www.boingboing.net/2... “Popular music gets that way because we're social animals who follow the leads of influential people and/or the crowd, liking what others like because they like it.”. but today, hooray! Big media control is crumbling to be replaced by?…

See doc searls again today http://doc.weblogs.com/2006... and his long post on the tyranny of the Alist gatekeepers of the blogosphere. And memes become popular because they make the Alist, the become popular because they are popular

And so we have digg, memorandum etc. to give mob logic a chance to compete.

But will the mob compete? Is our new memeocracy any more meaninfully meritocratic? Will the mob tell us as much want we *need* to hear any more than what we just *want* to hear? Or will it too slip down the slope to superficial info-tainment well slid by mainstream media these many years?

Are we better off with the internets and with internets 2.0? I’d say so

BUT - until we can all upgrade to owning multiple brains were forever at the mercy of the limited capacity of human attention and –therefore- those who filter our top 40

The short tail is dead, long live the short tail.

It’s new name is the memeocracy

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 08:16:30 -0000

Digg is the only one of those that sends me traffic. I don't use them because I don't care what "the Internet" thinks is important so much as I care what people I care about think is important. I read enough blogs that if it is important to me it will probably show up in one of those blogs in plenty of time for me.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Christopher Coulter — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:47:14 -0000

Better to phrase it not 'why don't you', rather 'why you should'. "Why don't you", is too finger-wagging, too blaming, too negative. Tell them why they should. Evangelists job you know. :)

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Brad Murray — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 17:20:33 -0000

I don't use any of the meme because aggregated RSS is more than good enough and I find it more personalized. I have bloglines on my browser and egress on my PocketPC. When I read something of interest and value I tag it in blinklist and delicious because I can't figure out which one I like better. Blinklist is a nicer overall app, but delicious has a much larger user base. It would be nice to have a single tagger for both of my profiles. I transform my recent Technorati tags with a custom script on my personal home page so it winds up working like a blog of my recently tagged items.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Keith Patrick — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 09:21:20 -0000

I don't use it for several reasons. Mainly, I don't know what it is and assume that because you push it so hard, it has something to do with blogging, and honestly, I think blogging is overhyped, so I steer clear of the myriad of blog-related tools; it's simply too much to keep up with and not enough enthusiasm for what's out there. And also, I simply don't like installing software on my PC, as I don't run as an admin, and I don't like the crud that ends up on my system after installing 3rd party software

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Rob Bazinet — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:12:42 -0000

I guess the question in my mind is also "why" do I need one of these so-called, Web 2.0 memtrackers? They are just another idea that a bunch of bandwagon jumpers has put together in the hopes of getting rich? What is the real value? Is the information they carry really that important? Isn't the draw to many people to see if they can get on one?

Robert, didn't you just point out you were not #1 on the Wordpress list because some nobody got himself on the digg site..twice. They just seem like a huge waste of time.

Please post why we should be using a memtracker?

Just my 2 cents. Hey, it's early here I am just having my first cup of coffee.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Christopher Coulter — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 07:58:16 -0000

Well I poke in every once in awhile, but most often find I saw said info eons ago, but then I am the News Hound, I guess good for basic users who want a snapshot of the blog conversations, who normally don't have time to folllow the (mostly unproductive) eternally Nakedly-Devoid Conversations. I think in order for "memetrackers" to work, there needs to be a topical customization. Your own personal tracker, I could see that filling a market need. Like say wanted to narrow-focus on one particular field or tech. The big group-think ranking system, as it stands now, serves few outside of those that generate the group-think content itself.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Michiel — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:36:16 -0000

Because memes suck. Like chain letters suck.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Doug Porter — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:17:39 -0000

Don't forget the startup being funded by Paul Graham's Y Combinator VC firm:

Reddit - http://www.reddit.com

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Dave the lifekludger — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:52:10 -0000

Swim against the stream. I'm interested in deeper connection not necessarily more - not sure those fleeting past the top memetrackers offer a real way of filtering anything but most popular signal from the noise rather than most personally appropriate signal. For you Robert that might be appropriate - but not necessarily for everyone.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Stephen Duncan Jr — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 23:35:32 -0000

I agree witth the general reasons here. But I've gone on to describe what might get me to use a "memetracker":

http://www.stephenduncanjr....

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Peggy — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 22:23:22 -0000

No, I do not use or see the need for memetrackers:
1. Narrow focus
2. Much of it is old news
3. Circle, circles, circled linked
4. Not very useful
5. One, 'chuquet.com', gives me a headache just looking at it. The page is so busy :)

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Michael Moncur — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 21:47:41 -0000

Reasons why I don't use a memetracker:

1. I read 150 RSS feeds and every time I look at Memeorandum, it's full of things I saw two days ago.

2. I'm not at all interested in news as a popularity contest. If that "4 things" meme had a centralized place to link to, it would have been at the top of Memeorandum - and it's not news, it's fluff.

3. They lack focus. Digg will promote anything about celebrities or Flash, and I'm not interested in 90% of what gets promoted. Tech.memeorandum claims to be focused, but let's face it: "tech" isn't a focus. Just about anything posted on a weblog can be "tech". And if I chose my own focus, "tech" wouldn't be it.

4. On top of everything else: I'm not in the habit of looking for new things to read. I've got work to do, and I'm already reading 150 news sources.

To me, sites like this are (a) a way to quickly "get up to speed" for those who aren't already plugged in and reading lots of weblogs, and (b) a way for RSS-crazed infomaniacs like me to find new things to read. The trouble is, I already have a great way to find new things (personal recommendations from those 150 people) that works far, far better.

Part of your problem is probably the terminology - "memetracker" means nothing to me. I'll bet there are more people on earth right now who have heard of Digg.com than know what the word "meme" means.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Todd Van Hoosear — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 21:10:50 -0000

Oh, one more thing, speaking of search, someone please point me to a site that ranks blog search results by Technorati/Blogpulse/etc. rankings.

(i.e., I want to find who the most influential blogs are that write about a topic, not just the most recent or the most "relevant"--whatever the hell *that* means ... what *does* relevance mean anyway in search enging results, never took the time to understand that?--findings).

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Todd Van Hoosear — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:51:05 -0000

Lance, it's pronounced like "gene." Think of it as a memory gene. (Although Dawkins preferred the word mimic to memory, because, like genes, a meme is self replicating via mimicry, or repetition.)

The interesting things about memes and blogs, according to some, is that memetic evolution is screwing up natural selection something fierce, at least in humans. The meme, then, is threatening to replace the gene.

This doesn't just mean that more bloggers and nerds are getting laid these days, but that could be a nice added benefit.

As a PR guy, I'm interested in the influence that phrases and words and ideas have. Thus I'm fascinated by how quickly and widely a single blog post, for instance, gets linked to and referred to by other blogs.

Other than some of the specialization going on (e.g., Memeorandum in the political arena), I don't see what any of the sites listed above get me that del.icio.us/ popular or any other ranked blog search engine. There's a good list here: http://www.andreaswacker.co...

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

russellreno — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:42:21 -0000

I started with Findory, then Memeorandum and now Tailrank. TR has the best of all the others.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

scobleizer — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:20:12 -0000

Brady: what's funny is I find more new sites on Memeorandum than I usually do on my reading of 800 feeds. Why? Cause when something new comes along and gets interesting it gets linked to a lot. Like Atariboy. Did you realize he wasn't even blogging three months ago?

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

scobleizer — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:18:50 -0000

Paul: the part I didn't say in my post is that when you do find a memetracker user they are EFFUSIVE with praise over them (and that often they tell you they check these things five to 10 times a day). It's interesting to see this disparity. I'm still not sure what it all means, but just the number of posts on this thread tell me there's some inate interest.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Brady Pennywell — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:18:10 -0000

The reason I don't follow them is that it promotes the old boy network of the blogosphere. I still enjoy coming across new opinions and not the same old same old.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Paul — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:14:17 -0000

If we are the early adopters, the feedback in here would suggest these things won't be important in the future, at least not in their current form. We should be easy to convince.

But hey, I'm sure in a year or so I'll be talking about how I always saw great promise in "memetrackers" or "cross advertising between news and blogs" or whatever we call it then :)

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Don Dodge — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:55:35 -0000

Very interesting thread. I use Memeorandum, TailRank, and Findory every day. I have usually read the stories from other blogs I subscribe to, but the memetrackers help in the following ways;
1. They rank what stories are deemed important by bloggers.
2. They provide links to other bloggers perspectives on the same topic,
3. They include news stories from traditional sources not found in blogs.
4. It saves me time so I don't need to visit all these other sites.

Findory is the only one I have seen that personalizes the stories you see based on what you have read before, and what others like you have read. In the long run I think this will prove to be very valuable in focusing on a subject, and finding new related content that you might not have found otherwise.

I interviewed Gabe Rivera of Memeorandum http://dondodge.typepad.com...

and Greg Linden of Findory http://dondodge.typepad.com...

I plan to ask Kevin Burton at TailRank for an interview next. I learned a lot about how these meme trackers work and why they are important by doing these interviews.

We are very early in the game, and we are the early adopters. This will be important in the future.

Don Dodge