A VC - Latest Comments in My Techmeme Obsession

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:45:40 -0000

Cool

I will check it out

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:04:49 -0000

I was one of the very first users of Friend Feed and have used it a bunch of
times since.

It's the UI that gets in the way for me

Please don't take that as a critique of friendfeed.

I can't use gmail either and I realize that I am in the minority on that app
too

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

Bart Muskala — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:48:27 -0000

Fred, I don't know if Robert (or others), convinced you already to check out FriendFeed, but your reason for not doing it is not correct. You don't have to wait for your friends to move over to FriendFeed, because you can follow their Twitter updates and even react to them using Friendfeed. All you have to do is add them as an imaginary friend.

The advantage you have is that besides following who you already followed on Twitter just got a lot more interesting because you can start following other interesting people WITH the direct ability to join the conversation. It is also a lot nicer to see videos directly instead of clicking to it and with some greasemonkey tweaks you are even able to 'preview' posts within FriendFeed... Put it in your sidebar and give it a try... It is well worth the try ;-)

Good luck...

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

Ed — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:33:13 -0000

But if the trend continues, and we (everybody) goes through brands like they're
disposable, who will want to build or back major projects from then on?

And if developers adjust to that culture, who will build deep entities?
What do we lose without them?

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

Wesley Barrow — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:08:12 -0000

If you're interested, I have started a discussion on HN this morning about
nailing down the best conversations and discovery methods for music. You
might enjoy some of the sites people are referencing.

http://news.ycombinator.com...

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

kenberger — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:51:18 -0000

This really speaks to a turning away from LOYALTY.
I do use a feedreader as a main tool, constantly monitoring a list of blogs that I choose to trust for content. But it is true that this approach keeps me more insular, and with so much great content from various sources, loyalty is not the best approach. I might soon give it up.

The same points to the erosion of brands like the NYTImes-- people still subscribe because they delegate their news coverage to a name they trust. But being such a conduit keeper is slowly becoming less tenable.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:04:18 -0000

There's a link at the top of AVC, called Tumblog

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

MartinEdic — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:13:43 -0000

I agree- another example is Mailboxes Etc., now known as The UPS Store.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

ausgang — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:27:36 -0000

lately I've given up techmeme for http://technewstube.com

coincidentally that site also aggregates most of what techmeme covers

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

Wesley Barrow — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:14:38 -0000

Well for my own selfish reasons, I would love to read more music related
posts on your A VC blog, but now that I you mentioned fredwilson.vc, I will
start going there too.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

MartinEdic — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:08:27 -0000

Jon,I'm not sure where you live but the Kinkos in my neck of the woods offer
terrible service. I'm happy to see that brand go away if it means a better
experience in these places.
And I agree, Techmeme has lost focus as have many of the popular tech blogs
who all seem to be writing the same story at the same time. Part of it is
the fault of widespread distribution of press releases. It is a lot more
effective for companies to offer one leading blog an exclusive. You're going
to get more attention. This of course from a non PR pro!

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

Mrinal — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:56:32 -0000

Ah - sorry that I did not dig in deeper. I though Allen Stern had a post on something like that but I obviously didnt look at it harder.
There is no question to your participation on FriendFeed :)

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:32:36 -0000

Ah, the joys of google juice!

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

forimpact — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:09:44 -0000

I just did a google search for TechMeme and this article appears on the front page of the search results. Found that interesting, thought you would want to know.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

rod edwards — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:32:43 -0000

Cheers, Fred - I appreciate the positive feedback greatly.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:19:57 -0000

Rod, I like techwatching.com

I just added it to my ff toolbar

Which means I'll start visiting it daily

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

rod edwards — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:12:48 -0000

FYI, here's one of yours that just bubbled up:

http://techwatching.com/clu...

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

rod edwards — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:09:40 -0000

Its not on purpose, no. There's a few factors that contribute to that.

1: The gadget blogs interlink, a lot - i.e.: engadget, gizmodo, crunchgear - if one covers a story, they all do. That interlinking pops those blogs up a notch in the algorithm to begin with.

2: They tend to get a lot of clicks - people appear to be very interested in gadget news both mainstream and esoteric.

3: Right now my seed list of feeds is probably too gadget weighted. Some of the off-shoots in particular (Engadget Mobile) should be downgraded in the algorithm. That's a symptom of the metrics that I use to choose which feeds to add to the seed list; Engadget Mobile, for instance, looks like a good seed candidate based on the number of inbound links it receives, but a large portion of those links are from other Engadget properties.

4: The gadget weighting also seems to be a Monday-morning phenomenon due to the relative lack of business news over the weekend; as more business/tech news develops in the work week, the prominence of gadgets will decrease.

So - to answer your question, its not on purpose - but the algorithm is performing as designed, based on the inputs I've given it, and the data it collects.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

Kyle Mathews — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:25:05 -0000

I don't know obviously how TechMeme decides to show a post without any links but it doesn't have to be manual process.

One possible method. Techmeme records how many people click on the different articles. Once having that data, it's a simple step to calculate how popular articles by a certain author on a certain topic are. If an author, writing on a certain topic consistently gets loads of clicks, than techmeme will automatically boosts the article to the front page.

I've been working (slowly) on an open source memetracker for awhile (http://drupal.org/project/m... and this is roughly how I intend my my memetracker to work. Like Scobleizer said, there are a variety of measures which TechMeme uses to calculate where on the page to place a meme. Content on an unpopular topic but with tons of incoming links could still be boosted to the front page. Or an extremely popular topic (measured by clicks) with no incoming links could still have a high enough score to make the front page.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

MartinEdic — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:23:39 -0000

Interesting. I dropped Techmeme from my daily reading list last week because there was never anything on it that I had not already seen. I think their shift to the mainstream was a huge mistake. It simply no longer offers me any value or insight- I'd rather view the original sources.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:17:54 -0000

There's more than one way to skin a cat Robert but you are right to notice what Duncan has done on the back of FF. it's impressive

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:11:43 -0000

Thanks Jon

I'll try to stay ahead. It's not easy.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:01:55 -0000

I took a look

These feeds are very gadget/mobile focused

Is that on purpose?

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

Scobleizer — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:27:00 -0000

John: explain to me why many of the people on TechMeme can get there without having ANY links to their stuff. I've seen that happen over and over again. In other words, links aren't the only thing TechMeme studies. Truth is, Gabe decides whether you're going to be on the seed list or not (based on your past behavior) and he decides what your news ranking is for various topics (based on your past behavior). He's totally changed that ranking behavior away from bloggers who didn't have brands and toward journalists who do have brands. I'd care about this game, but I saw very quickly that Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed would be more important news vehicles than TechMeme is. Based on my referer logs it sure worked out that way. Oh, and Duncan Riley's Inquistr is seeing sizeable growth and he's NEVER on TechMeme. How did that happen? Hint: Being a leader and participant in FriendFeed matters more than TechMeme does.

Re: My Techmeme Obsession

fredwilson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:21:35 -0000

That's great to here. I used to post a lot of music to the avc blog but have moved all of that to fredwilson.vc which comes back to avc via the fredwilson.fm radio player at the bottom of this blog. Would you like me to blog more about music at avc or is this ok the way it is?