It had to happen sooner or later. We’ve had Technorati. We’ve had TechMeme. Now we have Tweetmeme, which will track what’s hot on micro-blogging platform Twitter. The business of tracking the online conversation just a got shot in the arm a big hit with the tech equivalent of crack cocaine.
Built by the makers Fav.or.it, a yet-to-launch blog commenting system, and based on an idea by Marjolein Hoekstra, Tweetmeme looks for new content and tracks who else is talking about it. It ranks the content based upon who and how much a particular item is being discussed. As anyone knows, the number of URLs which spread virally through Twitter each day must run into the millions, so tracking where that viral trail starts and gains momentum is going to be fascinating. It also categorizes the content into blogs / videos / images and audio. Sure there are other Twitter aggregators like Politweets (politics), TweeterBoard (conversation analytics) and many others.
But Tweetmeme has a few other features including a ‘river’ of new content and RSS feeds for the river (or categorized feeds for blogs / videos / images / audio). In addition Fav.or.it will integrate Tweetmeme into its API so you’ll be able to comment on blog posts through Tweetmeme. [For an explanation of how Fav.or.it will work see here and here].
The knockout punch is that Tweetmeme will Twitter the original person who first mentioned the item if it makes it onto Tweetmeme. This is going to be fun…
Cool, going to start Twittering like hell right away to see if I can make it onto Tweetmeme!
This reeks of a mite on a fly who is buzzing around a pile of poo - not too interesting. I think that is a great analogy to the whole tweetmeme to twitter to pompous twitter users chain of stupidity.
If Yahoo’s so serious about e-mail, why don’t they launch e-mailmeme?
.com domain name is available
I can understand why they’re borrowing elements from Techmeme such as the suffix “meme”, the “Top Items” label, the “New Item Finder”, the River view, 5 minute updates, archiving 5-minute snapshops, sponsor links under “New Item Finder”, etc. Makes sense.
What seems odd is that they omit any form of acknowledgment on their site or on their blog. Come on Nick, you can do better!
Wow…that will get crazy traffic.
Can twitter handle the increased traffic when services automatically feed back on it?
Guys, just to be clear, Tweetmeme doesn’t tracking just any old twitter conversations, but *links* to content and “ranks the content based upon who and how much a particular item is being discussed.”
The number of followers a user has, can show how influential they are. [Unless someone has 100's/1000's of twitter names and gets them all to follow one person].
I’d like to see an all-english version though. I don’t know japanese, which seems to be half the page.
I’m not big on the way the thing is formatted — a bit confusing. But sounds like a sweet idea.
Thanks Mike for clarifying that. I was Twittering like a madman and STILL didn’t show up in Twittermeme. Now I understand why…
This should be really fun, great idea.
Can’t wait to see how it handles threads with the words “beer” and “SXSW” come March.
http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/
Twitter users might also want to check out Hashtags.org - tracks certain keywords that people tag in their tweets like #hashtags
Gabe, you’re right. Lame not to give props to what inspired it!
Yeah, it seems like the deliberate tagging of words or phrases in tweets would be better served by hashtags as Chris Messina and Nate Ritter have been discussing.
Gabe, my apologies, this thing has been pushed out the door at extreme speed and I should have included a mention of techmeme which has not only influenced tweetmeme heavily but also some of the work we have done on fav.or.it.
Sorry again for the omission, hope you like it anyway!
Sorry guys but they could have put a bit more effort into the design. It makes me want to puke.
Soon comes TweetPress too.. which will improve Twitter’s distribution scalability…
Lets build a website off of a website to make money while the site we are building off of isnt making any.
“The business of tracking the online conversation just a got shot in the arm with the tech equivalent of crack cocaine.”
what the hell kind of analogy is that? do you guys have ANY professional writers on this staff?
@TweetPress. Your site is not loading for me at the moment… May be a scalability issue
Why would anyone want to meddle through foreign language tweets. WTB language segmentation?!
For Tweeters, this is a big deal. Now I’m trying to figure out a way to do a play off the ‘Woofer/Tweeter’ stereo speaker thing. WoofMeme? What would it track?
Interesting concept, but I think it’s problematic as it is now..
My opinion that they’ll need to translate the messages to English, other wish what’s the point?
@iamshimone - thanks for checking - it isn’t online yet (ie., soon, but not that soon!!!)
Hey what happened to the Hannover Post? I was going to leave the comment of “Here is an idea… use a travel website” It would have been awesome but you ruined it when you realized there was no reason to have that on the site.
last time i checked you don’t inject crack cocaine.
if you did inject crack cocaine (or it’s tech equivalent) into your arm, you’d probably die, fairly quickly. so… “the business of tracking the online conversation just got a shot in the arm and is now dead.” oh damn! way to “butcher” that metaphor, mike!
I confess that I’ve done it before, but I can’t stand it when people consistently use twitter to spam out links…particularly users who import their RSS feeds into their personal account. Sorry, but unless you’re @kpbsnews I’ll read your feed when I’m good and ready. I’d personally rather see the linking trend decreased instead of increased, but I can see where there is value in knowing what links people consider important enough to notify their followers about while on the go. Even better is to provide feedback on what the followers found valuable as well.
I’ve decided that I’ll keep my eye on Tweetmeme for a while before writing them off, but the current interface is a clusterfuck. I sure hope their very next feature is the ability to set a language preference.
Still, hashtags FTW.
@Tweetpress - you’ve piqued my curiousity…private beta invite to lisa@sophistechate.com? =D
I was interested in this site at first, but after visiting it I am less impressed. Anyone else think the site was messy and hard to understand?
Also, I wonder how it handles TinyURL’s since many Twits use the service due to the 180 char limit in twitter.
googletrends for twitter, but the name’s gotta go. i have to think that bad names like this are used by companies who are angling to be acquired. there’s no way it’s marketable on its own.
@gilltots - LOL - You’re right, I really did ‘butcher’ that phrase! A case of posting too quickly methinks. Will clarify.
cuz tweetmemememe was taken????
Is it just me, or does this look like a hacked up and messy version of Jaiku?
I’m a little slow and late to the party on Twitter. I have decided Twitter is an ego boosting machine. It’s the quickest way to let your followers know that you are the biggest, baddest and brightest. Now Tweetmeme is going to track who’s first at being the biggest, baddest, brightest. Any time you can reinforce someone’s self opinion by letting everyone else know what you already believe - you have a business model. (I plan to use Twitter for exactly the reason I just described.)
As an aside… Two weeks ago I put this (below) on Fred Wilson’s blog. By the looks of Tweetmeme, they read my comment and built it in two weeks…
“Preemptive Publishing It seems to me that some of the of newer communication tools / platforms are about satisfying people’s desire to be the first to tell the world that they divined, discovered, and announced something - to scoop the news before everyone else. There has to be a business model in enabling people to preemptively publish, or at least to know what position they held in the stack of people that all seem to be having and sharing the same thoughts/ideas at the same time. Answer the question: who was first? Yeah, everyone can broadcast at will, but paying $6.00 a month to know that your stream of messages/posts are being sifted, sorted, ordered, and charted will let you know (and everyone else know) who preempted who…”
I am not sure I need such services like tweetmeme
@Lisa Brewster - oh thanks.. certainly will
What a joke. That’s all we need is a product based on another product that is for dorks with big egos who think people actually care about their tweets or someone trying to sell something and hopes people care.
Great example of yet another “look at me” web 2.0 application.
How about favotter?
http://favotter.matope.com/en/
It’s been there for a while. And slightly different argorythm (using favorite).
Lets start a TechCrunchMeMe
lol
I don’t understand tweetmeme. It doesn’t make any sense. I like s2n:
http://www.s2n.com/pulse/twitter.com
anyone seen a digg of twitters? Would love to track the funniest tweets. by a keyword/category like humor.
We also have a Twitter channel at Shoutingmat.ch, which is similar to Tweetmeme:
http://tweets.shoutingmat.ch/
Unlike Tweetmeme, our comment functionality is already live. We also have a number of other content channels (Politics, Technology, Celebrity Gossip, Lifehacks, and Sports).
I’d like to try it.