6/25/2007
Everybody's talking about Techmeme today...again. Scoble says he has all the inbound links and ought to be the top story about whatever the top story is at the moment. He's said basically the same thing before. Here's the problem with that: Scoble could write a post about arm farting and 30 or 40 people would immediately link to it, hoping he might link back. Scoble has more yes men than Michael Corleone and Michael Arrington combined. In other words, all those people linking wildly to Scoble aren't doing so because they think he is the world's greatest authority on arm farting. They are simply holding out their hands eagerly and hoping Scoble will shake it (via a link) as he walks by. Getting a link from Scoble is almost as good as getting arrested with Paris Hilton. It's not Scoble's fault he's the king of the blogosphere any more than it's Paris Hilton's fault she's in jail. All of which means that, at least at the top of the blogosphere, links are less about authority and more about popularity and power. Power to control admission to the in-crowd. Just like in life, some go radical and reject the system that excluded them. Others waive expectantly, hoping they'll get called over to play. Most are somewhere in between. But none of this is a sound basis for deciding what is top news and what isn't. There needs to be more to it. There needs to be a balance between popularity, authority, freshness and inclusion. Most of the target audience for Techmeme already subscribe to Scoble's blog. They are at Techmeme looking to see what others are saying about various topics. And let's not kid ourselves, a ton of Techmeme readers are bloggers who want to be included in the conversation. To remove the opportunity for inclusion would change Techmeme in a fundamental and adverse way. I have no idea how Techmeme works under the hood, but it seems to do a good job of picking out appropriate stories and discussion links. Sure, I get the point that the Register and the New York Times are not blogs. But be that as it may, I find Techmeme to be a lot less biased than most bloggers, A-List and otherwise, when it comes to picking up interesting and relevant links. Meanwhile, Louis Gray has a case of the new blogger's blues: "I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to a story before 'the big guys' get it, only to be ignored." We've all been there brother, but stay the course and you'll get some exposure via Techmeme. No, you won't get to be the main topic link very much, because A-Listers and a lot of wannabes will always link "upstream" in an effort to protect or obtain a membership card. But you'll get in the discussion links (where I live). Is it perfect? No. Is it more productive than waiting for a link from one of the A-Listers or wannabes? Absolutely. The blogosphere is not a level playing field and there are as many motivations for blogging as there are bloggers. This makes the trip up blogger's hill a steep one, but Techmeme has always struck me as a reasonably fair and informative place to start.
Posted by Kent @ 6/25/2007 10:03:00 PM |
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12 Comment(s):
It's not Scoble's fault he's the king of the blogosphere any more than it's Paris Hilton's fault she's in jail.
If I were drinking in front of the computer... spoooot.
I wasn't aware that Paris Hilton was tossed into jail without charges by jack-booted thugs. Maybe I'm mis-reading this paragraph..? Scoble's not exactly the king of anything, really. Unless he changed his name to BoingBoing.
Oh, and thanks for lessening the punch of my newest article I spent nearly a month writing. I linked to you and everything. :-(
It'll go live tomorrow anyway... we'll end up talking about the same general concept differently. Room for both. (That's what I get for slacking.)
Discussion links from TechMeme drive very little traffic. A handful, at most a dozen. They aren't worth worrying about.
Like much of bloggerdom, they look like they are delivering more attention to the "little guys" than they really are.
The "top links" are more useful, in the hundreds. But non-A-listers will very rarely get those.
"Is it more productive than waiting for a link ...", well, yes, strictly that's true. But it's like saying that if you want to buy a house, looking on the ground for dropped pennies is more productive than trying to marry a millionaire. Sort of true, but the amounts you can accumulate that way are really trivial and insufficient.
Ooooohhhhh mmmmmmyyyyyy ggggaaaaawwwwwddddd.
Please warn me when writing something funny like this. I almost spit Diet Coke all over my MacBookPro.
Heheh.
Anyway, Seth is right. I get about four times more traffic from Google Reader than I do from TechMeme.
But it's very hard to get a top-level link there now.
You know who's really getting screwed by all this? Mashable. They break more Web stories than TechCrunch does yet you rarely see Mashable up there.
The "About" page on Techmeme written by founder Gabe Rivera states that this is how it works:
At this moment, the next big story in technology may reside on a blog you've never heard of or a news site you don't have time to scan.
So I built a software agent to surface these links in real time and the result is Techmeme, the site you're visiting now.
Coverage is driven by a mix of industry insiders, passionate independents, and established journalists. So Techmeme gets the story no matter where it appears, and often days before it hits major sites.
From this I make the following assumptions about what happens. I think Gabe maintains a database of sites and / or feeds; he picks up new articles / posts using an algorithm that ranks articles / posts by inbound links coming from inside his "user database". Article ranking is what determines what's on the front page at any point in time. I'm probably simplifying the algorithm but exactly how it works is probably the same kind of trade secret as the Google page rank algorithm.
The "user database" was originally seeded from the A List and Top sites selected by Gabe but is added to by outbound links from the A List and Top Sites.
So it could be argued that Techmeme is another club that you can only join when the A list give you the leg up of a link.
Until then you can shout into the wind as much as you like but you won't get a discussion link on Techmeme - you need a blog search tool to find your link to a Techmeme article.
Seth says Discussion links from TechMeme drive very little traffic. They aren't worth worrying about.
This may be true when you are higher up the blogging hill than me; right now I'll take any traffic and especially links that a Techmeme discussion link brings. I was fortunate enough to get Techmeme discussion links as I've previously picked up a link from Scoble; although I may have fallen off the radar now as I haven't blogged for some time.
The question I can't answer is what moves you from the user database to Gabe's A List. I'm guessing it isn't an automated process, although inbound link volume probably plays a part in the selection process.
As a sometime analyst I'm intrigued by Scoble's comment about Mashable. If it can get a top link that suggests it's in the Techmeme A List. So appearing infrequently is either something about A List linking behaviour to Mashable or something funny going on in the Techmeme ranking algorithm. I think it's the former as, to be honest, I don't recall links to Mashable in the posts of A Listers blogs that I read. I've certainly never ended up at Mashable by following links in posts in my Reader.
Mea Culpa. I should have gone and digested the Scoble post first before opening my mouth.
Having done so, I can see that my thesis on how Techmeme works isn't what the discussion is really about. Instead it seems to be about how Techmeme chooses top links from within the A List.
I did one check which was to convert 15:38 GMT to San Fransciso time - which was 07:38. So The Register did get in first as Robert didn't post until 09:45. Which leaves the question of whether who gets in first (from the A List) is what drives who gets the top link.
Google Blog Search didn't do well when checking this morning on inbound links to The Register article. It's still showing only 1 link, Technorati is showing 3 links and Techmeme is showing 6 discussion links.
Steve, Techmeme discussion-level status brings almost no links. At that level, you're better off submitting to the C-list forum sites, not the diggs and BBoings, but those that are specialists in their area. Those are usually good for a link or two, and much less of a crapshoot as to whether you'll get an item through.
TechMeme doesn't arrange things in a strictly link-to fashion. Some posts are in the discussion area because of similarity in linking to a third item.1
Nah, items get listed on TechMeme without getting ANY inbound links. So, Gabe has changed his algorithm. I agree that at one time it worked mostly off of linking behavior but that no longer is true. It's very provable. Take all the articles on TechMeme and do a Google blog search analysis. You'll see that very few of the top stories have the most links.
His top-level links have been biasing lately to articles from news organizations with recognizable brands. Which is why TechCrunch shows up more than Mashable, for instance.
Gabe is in control of the seed list. He puts you there. Just like Google News decides whether or not to include you in the index. At least TechMeme will put anyone in the seed list for a day if someone on the seed list links to you.
The thing is, I think Gabe has the database equivilents of, say, 20 seed lists. I notice that on some stories certain people go right to the top of the list even without getting links.
It's a complex set of algorithms, though, because reverse engineering it isn't something I can do consistently enough. There's a bunch of variables that go into news judgment there.
Links from "A-listers" or Techmeme are just slightly better quality than links from Digg or Reddit. You may get a burst, but they'll rarely be back. I engage in posting/linking to sites like Scoble because that's where the conversation is, not because I expect any return.
In my experience Google organic traffic sticks around longer and comes back for more.
Big ups for the "arm farting" reference, btw.
OK, now my similar-yet-different article is up. FYI only. :-)
I've had Techmeme top links and discussion links, plus Scoble links. None of them were nearly as good a a Hugh McLeod link ;-) (which also resulted in new subscribers, which the others didn't)
I never thought I'd see Michael Corleone and Michael Arrington in the same sentence! my gosh that was hysterical!....
For some odd reason, whenever I open my big blogger's mouth about *anything* tech related, I'm linked on Techmeme. and I kinda like it :-) (esp. since I'm not really a tech blogger--more of a media blogger) The number of people who come over to check out my blog, I think, is related to how "hot" the topic happens to be. Lots when I wrote on the Kathy Sierra stuff. Less when I wrote about Supernova.
and I know what you're talking about re the people who obsessively link to folks like Scoble (or Jarvis or Arrington....odd putting those two in the same sentence...) but a few reads from fellow bloggers and we can see when the linker is just trying to garner A-list brownie points.
I've had lots of A-list brownie points myself, but in the long run it doesn't mean all that much. Like you said, it's all popularity.
Awhile back, Susan Mernit taught me a valuable lesson: sometimes it's not the level of traffic you have, or the huge number of links, but who's reading you. I've found that to be oh, so very true.
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