Techmeme Tips

I always assumed that Techmeme was some kind of algorithm that Gabe had built to sort through a universe of rss feeds he pulls into his system. I think that's certainly the base of the service. We can only guess what the algorithm is, but it certainly has to do with the weight of the content source (maybe something as simple as the leaderboard). And it also has to do with the number of authoritative content sources linking to the post/story. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.

But this week Techmeme launched something that suggests there is a lot more editorial selection in Techmeme than I previously thought. Here's a Techmeme link to the post I wrote yesterday.
Tip screenshot

Look at that last link that says "Thanks: atul". That's a link to a twitter message to @techmeme from Atul. So what happened here was Atul saw the post and thought it should be on Techmeme and twittered this:

tip @techmeme When Talking About Business Models, Remember That Profits Equal Revenues Minus Costs » link to When Talking About Business Models, Remember That Profits Equal Revenues Minus Costs

I somehow missed the post Gabe wrote on Wednesday of this week announcing the service but I think this is a great idea. There are always going to be great posts that are outside of the universe of rss feeds that Techmeme follows. And now, the readers of Techmeme who don't blog get a role in the decision about what gets up there.

I think this is a great move by Gabe and it also produces a great Twitter search feed of links people are submitting. Sweet.

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Comments (Archived):

  1. BmoreWire

    I like the idea if introducing editorial opinion into an algorithmic ranking system. I wonder how this could be leveraged in the ad network model? The problem with editorial opinion is you risk the chance that somebody is trying to jockey the system so there needs to be a mathematical stop-gap or system in place that builds statistical significance of the editorial input. I’d love to see twitter or web 2.0 editorial built into an ad network model and see what weight the editorial feedback loop carries versus a standard response rate model.

  2. RacerRick

    It’s cool that random people can get hat tips from Gabe.However, Bit.ly is going to be where we can really see what links are popular.

    1. howardlindzon

      agree on bit.ly which is techmeme for every subject eventually with twitter

  3. Joe Lazarus

    Smart marketing on Gabe’s part to make these tips public (ie. the tips are sent via @ replies instead of direct messages). Every time you submit a link, you’re promoting Techmeme to all your followers.

  4. Joel

    It’s a great addition. We added something similar last year on Boing Boing. Trusted community members can tweet to @fauc and it’ll show up right on our front door with credit directly to them. We plan on expanding the list of contributors even more widely in the coming months.

  5. howardlindzon

    said the exact same thing last week when i saw it. gabe survives and thrives while calacanus and arrington get stale, tired and whiney. gabe rules.

  6. Jonathan Strauss

    I love this feature. But as a blogger, it puts the onus of awareness and know-how on your readers. So, I whipped up a quick and (very) dirty ‘Submit to Techmeme’ javascript widget to embed at the bottom of blog posts (a la Zemanta’s Reblog button) – http://blog.thesnowballfact…

    1. fredwilson

      That’s great. I wish it was a feedflare

      1. Jonathan Strauss

        And I wish I knew how to write one 😉