I just stumbled upon the freshly launched Mar.Com, dubbed a ‘Techmeme for Marketing and Communication’ by co-creator Giovanni Gallucci on Twitter. It’s essentially an aggregation and filtering service for news related to advertising, digital marketing, search engine optimization, etc. where users can also submit events and jobs related to those topics.
First of all, I have to hand it to founders Gallucci, William Hurley and Mike Erwin: the (domain) name is awesome². That said, I fail to see the connection with Techmeme, as it has nothing to do with automatically aggregating news from a number of sources and having the best / most linked / most discussed article come out on top. Users can submit, discuss and rank stories related to all things marketing, so it’s more like a Digg for marketing and communication than anything else. In fact, I suspect they’re using Pligg CMS or a similar product to run the website although I’m not entirely certain.
Update: Gallucci got back to my e-mail and explained why Mar.Com is still ‘kinda’ like Techmeme:
While we are not totally automated we are taking hints from techmeme. A couple of the accounts on mar.com are “owned” by bots. They cull through RSS feeds for us and collect possible stories based upon our own internal algorithm. We then make a decision to promote the stories either to the site based upon the category the bot as recommended to us, promote the story to the site after changing the category or do nothing.
I’m sure there are numerous websites which have similar objectives as Mar.Com (although I can’t think of any besides Sphinn), and I’m also sure they’re going to have a tough time forming a strong enough community that actively engages with the content to make Mar.Com a must-visit. That said, it might be worth checking out from time to time to see if you’re not missing out on any stories.
Great domain, horrible site. They could have done much better then that, instead of spending thousands on the domain they should have put it into website development.
It’s like a crappy http://sphinn.com/ (which happens to be crappy too).
I just remembered that one too and updated the post, thanks.
I just join Sphinn and saw those same articles (featured in the screen shot ) over there so I guess they use the same database of articles or have the same reader base, I will probably join up to this one too, to see what the difference is from my perspective
Yeah, the domain is awesome and I am jealous of them (domain). But the site, hmm, needs lots of work, and the concept is more like that of NowPublic – http://www.nowpublic.com?
definately some hottest discussions will go on and useful stuff will be retrieved. but dude how many such sites man……
regards
aartha
Put a DOT in between Mar and COM in your logo. Think about the lowest common denominator.. like me for example. I saw the article and typed in marcom.com and was like WTF? – But the good news is marcom.com is goign to have a field day on their analytic direct connect number.
Done. Please let us know if you have any other feedback. Hopefully, TechCrunch will update the logo on this site to avoid any other confusion.
Done.
this is running on pligg and is literally a $25 template…anyone could put this site together in under a day. there are many of these out there and many look better than this…my wife likes a mom blogger digg site, called mommyranks
http://www.mommyranks.com
-scott
Hand it to them — it maybe be tautological, but they eat their own dogfood — any SEO game worth its salt would launch themselves as the “[bigsite] of [something]” to get google juice, eh?
Has anyone asked one of the founder’s why they are positioning this as comparable to techmeme? It immediately reduces their credibility as it shows a complete misunderstanding of the industry within which they’re supposedly experts.
If there isn’t any direct explanation from one of the founder’s on this point, the whole project can be discounted without a 2nd look.
See post update.
Thanks for the suggestion on the logo, we’ve modified it and several other things based on the community’s feedback.
Why is this a good domain? I mean, it’s not horrible or anything, but it isn’t super rememberable or have much of a personality. It kind of sounds like a fake corporation in a movie. I wouldn’t call it an awesome name.
Since marcom and bizdev people are all cheerleaders and washout jocks, the lack of personality or memorability is not a handicap. It’s enough that it be short and easy to spell.
So you rag the look and feel of the site but SlashDot (which is the worst looking news site ever) is 1000x worse. Geez, also they probably did build it in a week…so what?!? All that matters with these things is CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT…SlashDot has proven that for years and years.
While the idea is great, the execution is not. So I agree with many of you here.
However it an be looked at like this. Somebody comes along with an idea (i.e. Yahoo) and then someone else comes along (i.e. Google) and uses the idea however they execute it perfectly.
It is a step in the right direction. Too bad for them since we (http://www.dmipartners.com/) have been doing what they are telling other marketing agencies to do for many years. Essentially it is too little too late for agencies who have not been using these types of approaches before the economical downturn. We already have it down to a science while they are only starting to get their feet wet.
I’m very interested to hear why the author of this post, Robin Wauters, thinks “they’re (Mar.com is) going to have a tough time forming a strong enough community that actively engages with the content to make Mar.Com a must-visit?”
I have no affiliation with this site, but the author doesn’t make it clear why they believe this to be the case.
Clarification please.
Clarification: plainly put, this guy is an idiot. He seems to believe that, somehow, and because he is allowed to post negative garbage on TC, he has some sort of “authority” to offer his worthless “opinions.”
Just ignore his posts.
Yep. In fact, ignore this blog. Shoo.
Clarification: Digg-a-likes have a hard enough time reaching critical mass when they have a general focus (see also-rans reddit and mixx). Trying to gather enough content in a niche field is asking a lot. Would *you* go to that site with any frequency? I sure as hell wouldn’t–it looks like a haven for SEO-obsessed jackasses and spammers and gray-hat marketers.
Great domain name…What about incorporating some opensource CMS?
There are many that might help to accelerate the look you are trying to achieve.
It certainly looks like its using the Pligg engine and without credit which is very lame. why something this rudimentary gets a plug on tc is beyond me.
Why in the world do these guys keep showing up?
They are no talent hacks and some of the biggest douches around, yet fucktards like this keep trying to push the sites they set up.
Are you getting paid to do this for him, or is he just blowing you?
Am I missing something here? I posted to get the post’s author to provide some clarification on why they think mar.com will have a difficult time building a community.
I see Charlie’s comment in reply to mine, who is he calling an idiot?
Robin, who are you telling to shoo?
Frankly I’ve very confused. I’m trying to get insight from you guys into why you think the mar.com idea won’t work.
I’d never heard of the site until you posted this … but as a business person I’m always interested to learn why something will or won’t work and why people think so.
So can someone with a positive attitude reply with some insight into this?
Also, some of you have mentioned that the site needs a lot of work. What do you feel should be improved?
Charlie was calling me an idiot, I told him shoo. And to answer your question, I think webcock above nailed it.
We combine human editor and bots to collect tech news.
http://www.buzzup.com
Thanks for the post, Robin.
Techmeme is no longer 100% automated either.
I think they could of done better with the domain. While it is an incredible name, a more catchy and better suited domain would have been a better (and cheaper) alternative. These three letter domains are better suited for corporations.
WTF. It is a new site. Cut them some slack. Happy Xmas to you too. I haven’t seen it but they erent the ones clamoring to be reviewed on tc. If you want to talk bad design. Is that photo of mike with his weird haircut still up?
Hi all,
We launched something along the same vein a few weeks back called undrln. It’s here: http://www.undrln.com
It’s really just a simple reddit/digg clone. We made it largely for ourselves. We run a small interactive agency, and just wanted to have a good place to share/find links with friends.
So far traffic has been alright–in part due to our strong links within the design community. Submissions aren’t that high yet, but I believe that’s in part to due with launching just before the holidays. (Maybe not the smartest thing.)
Most of the users have commented that they like how clean it is. This is something that we really felt was missing from most of these sites. I, personally, am frustrated by how much noise there is on these sorts of sites and really just want quick links presented as simply as possible.
Cheers!
Eric
Robin, well that clears that mess up. Thanks.
Webcock, thanks for the clarification and sharing.
“I’m sure there are numerous websites which have similar objectives as Mar.Com (although I can’t think of any besides Sphinn)”
I guess http://www.earnersclub.net/ was also one of them – this site seems for spammy submissions but it is moderated carefully. You can find top and good articles there, if it’s your niche.
Thanks for the suggestion on the logo, we’ve modified it and several other things based on the community’s feedback.