DISQUS

When you call Microsoft " the Redmont, Wash. company", it's similar to when weather reporters call snow "the white stuff".

Robert, I think you're just trolling me now. Traffic's not flat and I suspect you know that. The other stuff you said is even dumber so I'll just not respond.

Hey Robert...most of my thoughts on this are written "between the lines" of your post for most readers.

But I should point out one thing: the vast majority of early adopters, executives, journalists, and "influencers" in technology are not actively monitoring FriendFeed or Twitter. You already know why: most can't deal with noise, if they've even tried FriendFeed or Twitter in the first place.

So which vanguard does FriendFeed and Twitter have a lock on? I'd say "social media" early adopters, people interested in things like twitter client comparisons, new blog widgets, and personalized aggregators. A good proportion of these are bloggers or would-be bloggers who've noticed they get reactions they wouldn't get from direct visitors to their blog. In Techmeme's view, these people are a part of the larger tech landscape, but by no means the defining group.

Andy Beard's comment is right. Robert's reply to Andy is wrong. Robert, techmeme.com/lb is an output, not an input. And there are many, many blogs whose links send juice/love/rank equal to TechCrunch's.

Great post Robert. You've put a lot behaviors we've seen from certain early adopters into context.

Louis: indeed, some of Robert's inferences are wrong since reverse engineering Techmeme is tricky. Overall, Robert continues to be rather savvy about Techmeme.

Robert: nah, I'm supporting you, not getting you wrong. I don't care if more people will use FriendFeed than Techmeme (it may very well happen). I care about Techmeme's value as a tech news site, and I don't think Twitter or FriendFeed change that for the worse. In fact, I think they improve the environment for Techmeme's aggregation, because people in the know are now better connected, which ultimately makes Techmeme more interesting.

That might be better for voracious infovores such as yourself. It serves some people better to "lead" Techmeme more than "follow" Techmeme. And Techmeme may be better for it, depending on what you blog about as a result.

Thanks for the update Andy. I was contacted by...someone from Google, and much of what was speculated was confirmed. Techmeme was dinged for those links, but should not have been given the disallowed redirects. Google evidently noticed the paid links during the week in 2006 when I did NOT have /goto disallowed, i.e. during the week Techmeme did pass PageRank (whatever that means :-) ). Google resolved to rectify.

I still disagree with Google's approach, but I should note I was treated exceptionally well yesterday. About as good as anyone could expect. I didn't even have to submit a reconsideration thingy, whatever that is.

Thanks Andy, very interesting. Techmeme used to have a PR7. I've been hearing about this -3 hit for a while.

Do people see the absurdity here that I do? It's like all the web's publisher are now required to internalize a working model of Google's PR algorithms.

Funny how one gets the impression from your post that Techmeme's webmaster acted with consideration of these issues in mind. Nope, I acted obliviously, blissfully so. I didn't disallow /goto to supply pure inputs to Google's PR calculations. I did it because dumb crawlers (not Google's) were hammering that directory, seeking pages that weren't there. My blissful ignorance has ended of course. I now know I'm expected to do more than just clearly mark the links as Sponsor Posts. I did nothing wrong or deceptive, but that's no longer good enough.

Hey Tim Berners-Lee, you once said "hyperlink by enclosing anchor text in an A HREF tag". Hope you don't mind, but Google's amending that with "oh, and make sure to use a nofollow condom on links to entities with which you have commercial relationships, and if your links are redirects, robots.txt disallow the redirect urls...wait, better yet, nofollow those too". Thanks for the simplicity Tim, but this is what progress looks like.

Yes, we all know Google is free to set the rules for its search engine. And I agree with that. But I'd like to submit this: Google wants me to learn these arcane rules, apply them, and then prostrate myself for "reconsideration". Is this a winning long-term strategy for Google?

I've met Andrew, great guy. Probably not so new as a blogger though. Revisting his blog just now, I'm gonna put it in my Google Reader short list...

No

Dawn, an aggregator is a kind of site.

I love reverse engineering reports! They're very entertaining, and I learn a great deal from them too.

Joe: my response: Robert's noticed many non obvious things, and has "reverse-engineered" better than anyone else I've yet encountered. He's right about a lot, but he's quite wrong about...a lot. Which part is he right about? Excellent question! :-)

Techmeme's clearly a news site. I'd love to be pointed to something I've written stating that it's not a news site!

Wow, you've suggested new reasons to bleep that I haven't even thought of. Thanks! As for my reasoning, I commented on that here:
http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2007/04/01/tec...

Yep, it's algorithmic, and can be fooled, but probably only through very creative spelling...

Very handy. Thanks Robert. I made up a smaller list a few hours ago and emailed it to a few people...TC posted about the same time you did in fact.

The different capitalizations and punctuations make this very error prone, but it's still great to finally have some news subscriber data.

That's Techmeme's mischievous side in action. Recognizing weekends are slow, it synthesized a puzzling headline to confuse and amuse. It's THAT clever.

Or...maybe Techmeme was fooled into believing that the page was a news article. It's THAT dumb.

What's a "meme-tracker"?

Robert, I was pointing out a way Podtech could make it easier for more people to play your interview. The tech tip conveyed of your response was fine, but I also noticed a suggestion that I'm lazy/inept. Hmm...in any case, I reaffirm mp3s would be helpful.

That sounds interesting, and I'd like to listen while I jog. But I don't see an .mp3 version, so I can't. :(