Last night, the New York Times quietly launched Blogrunner on the technology section of its main site. Blogrunner was one of many techmeme copycat sites, until the New York Times bought it last year. Like Techmeme, Blogrunner is a service that keeps track of the latest news and blog posts on a range of topics (Politics, Technology, Media, Business, Economy, Law, Health, Movies, Books, Religion, Iraq, Entertainment). Now those links are appearing on the New York Time’s main site, starting with the technology section, in a middle column titled “Technology Headlines from Around the Web.” It is also on the bottom-right of the Health section in a column called “Health Around the Web.” And links from Blogrunner will appear at the bottom of individual stories, giving readers a choice between related articles from the New York Times and related articles from around the Web (much like some sites use Sphere).
Says New York Times editor (and Bits blogger) Saul Hansell: ” Unlike Google News and Techmeme, we aren’t trying to prove machines can be better editors than people. We have a hybrid model, with Web Crawlers and Editors both helping find and ranks posts.” But the NYT would like nothing better than to displace those two news crawlers.
At first glance, it looks like it is Techmeme for a mainstream audience. TechCrunch happens to be at the top of both the NYT Blogrunner and Techmeme right now. It will be interesting to see which one delivers more traffic. We will report on the results tomorrow. (Update: Blogrunner is not killing anyone yet. Of all referring sites to TechCrunch yesterday and today up until 11 AM EST, Blogrunner is ranked a lowly 105—although we are no longer listed on the NYT Technology page. In contrast, Techmeme is our 30th largest referrer.)
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It looks like it is. Then it’s to get sold, quickly!
Their needs to be intelligent competition in this new industry. Obviously, rankings have an impact on advertising. However, it is a great way to discover new blogs. Hopefully, the emphasis will expand beyond TECH in the furture.
D’oh. Because it focuses on headlines, it looks like my buzz index. I suspect they spotted my spider and got the idea that way.
I hate the interface, I wonder if they’ll able to give any competition to Techmeme!
Its great to see an old-method media company innovating. NYT may be one of only a few traditional media conglomerates to survive the transition.
Easy kill!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
sorry, obvious ideas don’t get to have copycats
Kudos to NYT for resisting stagnation
I wish NYT could be more innovative than that…if not…atleast they could put the money in acquiring some innovative startup….if you cannot have organic growth ….use your cash to buyout smaller startups…..
people need to learn something from google….
http://www.meetingflex.com
Social Networking + Video - Crap
Wow, I can’t believe that I actually like the techmeme layout better than Blogrunner. I didn’t think anything could be worse than techmeme.
techmeme all the way!
Sounds a little bit like what we’re doing over at auditoriumA.com except we go way beyond blogs and news headlines to give our members one click access to videos, audio, and products in addition to articles.
Yahoo has also begun linking to articles on their homepage. It will be interesting to see if traditional and Web 1.0 companies stick with and expand on this approach.
http://www.auditoriumA.com
I think that is more focused on mainstream audience, let us see how it work though sphere it is already doing that, if I am not wrong.
It’s a little bit early for a traffic comparison, I’d say. Although they are getting buzz right now, they are new, right? So wait three months before making them go head to head with TechMeme.
What no sports? Blogrunner has a ton of sections but no sports?
NYT bought BlogRunner in 2005.
Kind of hard to call BlogRunner a Techmeme copycat isn’t it? Perhaps it was vice versa.
Actually shows a lot of foresight by the New York Times as well.
Although you wouldn’t call them fast moving — as it sure took a long time to get up the nerve to integrate it into their web site.
“Unlike Google News and Techmeme, we aren’t trying to prove machines can be better editors than people. We have a hybrid model, with Web Crawlers and Editors both helping find and ranks posts.”
Sounds like BuzzFeed to me. That was there model when they launched way back when…