efuddle.com

Other sponsorship models for Techmeme: What if the sponsor need only pay for a single post, not a monthly commitment, as Dave Winer suggests? Or what if the sponsor could pay to join "conversations" ("discussions", "clusters", or "memes") already live, as Ross Mayfield suggests? I've considered both this past year, and think they're fundamentally sound. Of course both would need sophisticated payment systems and anti-defacement checks requiring considerable investment to do right, certainly part of the reason I don't offer these today. Furthermore, I suspect companies haven't yet adapted to the web enough to make Ross's idea a big success. Maybe that will change.#

Featuring blogs on other blogs: A simple Wordpress or MT plugin would make it easy for bloggers to implement the "Sponsor Posts" concept I've introduced on Techmeme. Given the growing number of decent company blogs, I believe there's a place for this. And and even bigger place should there arise a great variety of compelling product feeds containing affiliate links that pay republishers.#

Why I don't offer a personal filter

I'm facing another round of inquiries on personal filtering, mostly from Techmeme fans who've read Ross Mayfield's or Dare Obasanjo's recent thoughts on the matter. (Just for the record, the first round included requests from Jeff Clavier and Ted Leung nearly a year ago!)

Why don't I offer a personal filter service aka "meMeme" aka "my.memeorandum"? Briefly, filters based on the editorial approach used for Techmeme/memeorandum don't work well outside of a few topic domains (like politics and tech), because cross linking is typically too sparse to produce a compelling mix of news. Sam Ruby unintentionally confirmed this yesterday should you pause to consider what sort of daily news selection could be derived from his Venus output. While it's true that cross linking is dense in some blogospheres, these are largely the same domains already covered by my existing sites.

Why not try editorial approaches based on new kinds of semantic analyses? My belief is that the requisite technology is harder than anything powering Google News, Topix, or my current sites. Attempts based on current technologies come up woefully short, with the resulting "Daily Me" consisting of a seemingly random mix of content missing most or all "must have" articles and posts. And having the "must haves" is essential for winning the earlier adopter types that would dominate the userbase of such a filter in the first place.

This isn't to cast doubt on all attempts at personal filtering. In fact, the RSS aggregator is probably a good place to sprinkle in such capabilities, as Nick Bradbury has begun to do in FeedDemon. Link-counting approaches inside aggregators will indeed succeed in exposing a few hot topics a week (beyond what's on Techmeme, etc.) for a certain class of user, a welcome feature for some. Sam Ruby's Planet Planet engine may similarly succeed in surfacing several hot topics over the course of a month. But users probably shouldn't expect anything rising to the level of a reliable personal filter or a compelling "Daily Me" alternative to current news sites.#

How fast will "BizDev 2.0" make the papers? A rather compelling "meme" was born (or reborn?) today: that APIs can eliminate much of the waste and inefficiency in business development. Since the concept is tidy, promises cost savings, and bears a catchy name, it seems awfully likely to spread to news sites beyond Techmeme.#

Examining your opinion on Nick Carr's latest link bait serves as a handy test for finding if you have a future as a widely read blogger. If you're convinced that you can't succeed because popular bloggers are stingy with links and respond to people who engage them, you're probably right. On the other hand, if you recognize that there are few thousand TechCrunches waiting to rise from obscurity (by tackling underserved niches, not opining on the issues of the day), maybe you should start one.#

Chris Pirillo, in a moment of transcendent clarity, has exposed the chasm of understanding that exists between mimes (not memes) and myself. A companion bLaugh cartoon expands on his magnum opus:

I'm drawing attention to this cartoon in part because I have no choice. Blogospheric law dictates that the subject of a cartoon must reblog that cartoon unconditionally. Especially when the cartoon offers 10% off GoDaddy domains (use coupon code "BLAUGH").#

I'm not cut out for blogging, it would appear from my output over the last 1½ months. Yet that same period presented the opportunity to finally meet up with characters such as Danny Sullivan, Mike Masnick, Prince Campbell, and Denise Howell. Not bad at all.#

Techmeme hacks Gnomedex: I'm actually thrilled Chris Pirillo opened Gnomedex with a call to "hack" Techmeme by mass-linking his blog post. Well, thrilled once I learned that his post didn't signal an actual security breach!

Results were probably less than hoped, just a lone "More Items" headline seen here. Why? My system has long selected headlines by modeling how interesting a post is, which involves weighing features beyond just link count. (The model is imperfect but always improving, BTW). So Chris, please tweak your strategy and try again at Gnomedex 7.0!#