Feature Friday: Techmeme
Yesterday Techmeme launched a redesign. I like it. Nicely done Gabe.
I thought I'd use this news as a jumping off point to talk about my favorite feature on Techmeme. When a news event happens, I like to see various pundits' take on it without having to click thru and read every post.
Techmeme has always done this better than any other news service. Let's take this news that Twitter can now comply with local censorship laws and takedown notices without taking down a tweet globally (good news in my mind).
It looks like this in Techmeme:
But if you click on the down arrow on the left of the news item, you get a "blown out" version of the news story which looks like this:
Granted that these are only headlines and they can't and don't give you a full sense of the take that each of these writers has on the news. But a quick scan of the tone and tenor of the headlines will tell you quite a bit. And when you've got 30 seconds to take a quick look at what's going on in the tech world, that's worth a lot.
I use this feature often. At least once a day. Many times way more than that.
For tech news, I've tried pretty much everything new that comes along, and for the past four or five years now, nothing beats the duo of Techmeme and Hacker News for me. Each has its benefits and together, you can get a great sense of what is going on in tech in real-time all the time. Thanks Gabe and Paul for building these services and maintaining them.