Incremental Blogger

A few months back I started working on thredr.com, a service that keeps track of online news conversations around topics that I’m most interested in, such as Tablet PCs, Microsoft developer trends, and soon Robotics. It’s very much like TechMeme in that sense.

The way it works is that it culls through about a thousand or so RSS feeds applying various criteria for how to group or list stories. Of course, the idea is to try to place the most interesting stories first–all done automatically, several times a day.

One bit of feedback I got early on from friends is that they thought there would be no way an algorithm could generate an interesting enough collection of stories. Creating the list by hand would be so much better. The arugment goes that a human can better editorialize.

My response: The algorithm is doing no more than what you tell it, so in fact, you can editorialize through the algorithm. Want to emphasize links from more popular blogs, for instance, because that’s where you think the more interesting stories are? Then simply change the algorithm to do so. Likewise, if you don’t care for the conversational tone of posts coming from forums, then don’t scan through them or demphasize them.

You see, whether an algorithm is being applied or not, there’s still plenty of editorializing going on. It’s just that it’s automated.

I’d argue that the creators and managers of TechMeme, for instance, are in fact editors. It’s simply that they apply their editorial instincts via an algorithm. They decide how sites should be ranked, they decide which sites to scan, which ones to give preference to, and so on.

Take a site like ValleyWag, for example. TechMeme promotes ValleyWag stories all the time, giving them comparable weight to let’s say an article from SearchEngineLand. The result is that as TechMeme readers we’ll often see stories about some rumored attack on someone alongside breaking stories on an acquisition or major service. That’s TechMeme’s choice. That’s their editorial decision. The algorithm simply follows the instructions the “editors” at TechMeme have spelled out for it. If I were on the editorial board of TechMeme I’d make a different decision. That’s just me. Others would create a different mix.

Every now and then I take inventory about which products and services I really use and rely upon.

In terms of the latest trending products, my list is pretty thin.

At the top is my blog, which you’re reading here. It’s still my number one way of archiving my thoughts and experiences that other can read. It’s meant to be public and shareable.

Next up is Twitter. Some call it a micro-blogging service, some liken it to IM. Both are right. It’s a must have for pushing out small posts as well as keeping track of what’s going on.

In third place are social news sites, such as TechMeme and Thredr. TechMeme I think most people know about. It clusters conversations taking place in the blogosphere and various media sources. Thredr is something I started, which is like TechMeme, but tracks topics that TechMeme doesn’t cover, such as news around R/C vehicles, Apple, Tablet PCs, Microsoft developers, digital photography, and soon Robotics. I check each of these three of four times a day to see what’s going on.

I’m also a fan of video. So I often check what’s going on with Qik as well as a couple other sites, though I’ve noticed that I’m doing this less and less. I’m getting too busy I think.

What’s most notable at least to me, is that Facebook doesn’t make my list. It’s too much of a walled garden to be interesting and there’s tons of junk applets that make it too MySpace-ish for me. I wouldn’t notice if Facebook fell off the edge of the earth. I’m not alone in this. Many of my friends that were giving Facebook a try have pretty much stopped using it too. No doubt students will still use it because of its strong social networking value, but for the rest of us, it’s not all that.

Likewise, I gave FriendFeed a short spin. Outside of the fact that I could see it becoming the epicenter for many online conversations, I don’t have that much desire to sit and chat and page through lists of….stuff.

Lastly, I might throw in an honorable mention to Linked In. Whereas Facebook reminds me of a highly organized high school event (that would place MySpace in the middle school social rung I guess), Linked In has maintained a fairly professional feel about it. I don’t use it all that much, but every now and then I get a link request and visit the site. It does maintain a network for me that’s a step above my email contact list in terms of who I might know. My email list is still more valuable overall, but still, I see how Linked In fits in.

What’s all this mean? Who knows. Since I often guess wrong on trends like this, I’ll use reverse psychology and predict that Facebook is going to be acquired for more money than any other startup and that Twitter and TechMeme–both services which I think have the greater value–will continue on their independent paths.

Update: Robert Scoble argues the locked-in feeling I get with Facebook has great value to Microsoft.