Comments on: NYTimes Blogrunner v. TechMeme

By: JDA

JDA — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:41:43 +0000

Wow this is crazy, kind of like how Yahoo sent more traffic to my site than Google on its third day… that was a true test of long term sustainability. Maybe you should go back and see how much traffic you got from tech.memeorandum on its 3rd day and give us that data as well.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:54:45 +0000

I am a big fan of TechMeme but it is NOT the water cooler of the blogosphere. It is perhaps the water cooler of the Tech / Web 2.0 blogosphere but it ends right there.

If you want to find the future water cooler of other areas in the blogosphere then check out http://www.SocialRank.com, which already identifies todays hottest blog posts for many categories other than tech.

By: Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:49:55 +0000

Michael:
Can you get me some of that niffty green for my post?
It would be appropriate, I have lots of money.
You could too, **wink, wink**

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:06:56 +0000

Robin, yeah, i think you are right. But we had the data, why not publish it. If things change, we’ll report on that as well.

By: Robin

Robin — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:13:08 +0000

I can’t believe you are actually making that comparison after just a few days. This is a huge step for a traditional publisher — most are too terrified to give their visitors a reason to click away from the publisher site. Also, Techmeme will never have the opportunity to take their concept to a more mainstream audience the way the NYTimes does, which in the long run will only work to drive more traffic to more bloggers posts.

Give it time, this concept is a big one for the traditional publishing world.

By: nemrut

nemrut — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:02:18 +0000

..also keep in mind that NY Times requires registrations to read articles if i remember correctly. it seems like a small thing but many are either too lazy of turned off by the prospect fo filling in another form.

By: steve ballmer

steve ballmer — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:52:51 +0000

Neither matter at all! MSBlogPostTimer is the real thing!

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com

By: BeerCo Software Blog

BeerCo Software Blog — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:57:32 +0000

Aggregating news, it’s cheaper than paying reporters – NY Times…

NY Times releases a RSS news feed aggregator. This is the first time I have seen a major newspaper go to 100% automation.
I wonder if they will fire the humans now? Maybe they need a few more years for that to happen.
At any rate, if there aren’t…

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:34:40 +0000

Personally i prefer techmeme. It seems like the nytimes product is simply a poorly executed me too app.

By: Leaderboard

Leaderboard — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:55:47 +0000

I’m sure you’ll love the ny times when they come out with a leaderboard and techcrunch is on top.

By: Sam

Sam — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:13:20 +0000

I totally agree with Rico.

Talk about an apples to oranges comparison. What is the relevance of comparing a site solely focused on tech and highlighting Techcrunch (I doubt solely with algorithms) with one that has a much broader focus and without incentives to scratch Mikey’s back?

By: Rico

Rico — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:03:14 +0000

Mike will take any chance (even a stupid post) to pump his friend’s company. . . lame

By: Rico

Rico — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:51:32 +0000

With all due respect, I think techmeme is irrelevant in a “global” context. I also think the reason why Techcrunch keeps mentioning this site is because Michael and Gabe are good friends and because techmme keeps putting Techcrunch on techmeme’s frontpage. So this is nothing more than a “I scratch your back, you scratch mine”.

By: Shafqat Islam

Shafqat Islam — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:06:36 +0000

David — which site are you talking about? Interesting comment with a dire prediction, but not quite clear.

By: Tim Glenn

Tim Glenn — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:55:25 +0000

“TechMeme is too small to be counted by Comscore, so they probably had less than 500,000 unique visitors.”

Mike – If Comscore isn’t picking up Techmeme, then I’d say they have less than 200k. Granted, techmeme viewership probably isn’t accurately represented by Comscore’s sampling methods…but even Compete.com lists them 142k for Sept ‘07.

By: David

David — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:54:29 +0000

This site is a giant newspaper aggregator, not a news and blog aggregator – if they don’t fix that it will fail miserably.

By: Max

Max — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:50:09 +0000

“TechMeme is the water cooler in the blogosphere.”

This has been mentioned above and elsewhere, but it merits more emphasis. Techmeme only covers a very small set of blogs covering a fairly narrow niche that happens to be followed by power users of the web. The outsized importance that you place on the site is all out of proportion with its actual importance to web users. Until Techmeme moves beyond its tech focus (and beyond the other two niche aggregators it has set up) it will never be a mainstream site. The NY Times on the other hand could expand Blogrunner beyond its tech section to all of its sections and blow Techmeme out of the water by reaching a broader set of readers.

Again, the tech blogosphere is not the blogosphere.

By: Support this story on Stirrdup

Support this story on Stirrdup — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:13:40 +0000

NYTimes Blogrunner v. TechMeme…

This story has been submitted to Stirrdup. Your support can help it become hot….

By: Voices

Voices — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:00:01 +0000

Nice comparison Mike. Perhaps the NYTimes and Blogrunner should educate bloggers on how to be included as part of their roster. Seems to me that TechMeme has a lot more bloggers and websites included in its index, thus more stories to draw from.

By: Petri Pokka

Petri Pokka — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:21:21 +0000

Well, Blogrunner is what, a week old? Give it some more time.

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 10:54:07 +0000

Ditto the wait-and-see on adoption rates, but I also agree with Joe Duck above… Gabe has contributed something very important to us all (even though I still wish there was a personal bozo filter in the listings….

jd/adobe

By: Adam Benayoun

Adam Benayoun — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 10:46:12 +0000

@10 Thing is that NYT may attract 14.5M unique visitors, but how many of them are really following the technology section? Let’s say 1/10 are, it means the technology section of NYT attract 1.5M unique visitors (X3 times what Techmeme attracts).

You still have to think about how many of them will really click on the blogrunner small feature and follow to blogrunner site and then click on the news to get to one of the site listed there. I believe that we’re talking about lower figure than Techmeme.

What’s interesting with blogrunner is that it house under the same site, the techmeme for several niche, and that mean users visiting techmeme but also visiting political blogs or aggregators will find themselves using the NYT blogrunner rather than techmeme.

I’d give 6 months to see blogrunner taking a larger role in the “technology” blogosphere.

http://www.octabox.com

By: mahesh sharma

mahesh sharma — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 09:57:08 +0000

I think you’re right in saying that techmeme is the water cooler of the blogosphere, but an even more interesting result this comparison shows is how small the blogosphere really is.

If the NYT had 14.5 million uniques and only 250 clicked through via links on blogrunner, what does that tell you about how interested the public is in blogs and blogging?

NYT is one of the biggest news sites in the world, and now that it has integrated an agregator as part of its coverage, once the mainstream audience is ready to start using blogs as a news source, The NYT will be their first stop.

A great decision by The NYT, which is something i covered in my blog.

By: BlueVerse SEO

BlueVerse SEO — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:29:22 +0000

White Collar Spamming – TechMeme and Blogrunner…

When mediocre webmasters do it they are immediately pointed and de-indexed immediately but when big coorporations do it they are reviewed on several high-profile blogs/sites as something “great” now what is so great in showing news from oth…

By: Michael Woo

Michael Woo — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 07:56:48 +0000

Heck, the traffic is just enormous.. how i wish to have one of their sites .. maybe this xmas, my wish could be fulfilled XD

huh? why dick is laughing out loud?! @@?