Interesting interview with Techmeme creator Gabe Rivera by Danny Sullivan.

I’m also addicted to TechMeme. It does its’ job so well. Whilst Digg consists mostly of tedious trivia, Techmeme does a great job of finding serious tech stories. They use a mix of technology and human evaluation (i.e. link analysis).

Gabe has an interesting response to the echo-chamber effect:

“Clearly Techmeme creates superficial incentives for “echo chamber” participation, yet I don’t see clear evidence that this makes things noticeably worse. I still like to trot out the example of the day my site launched. eBay’s acquisition of Skype became one of those huge story clusters, and this was hours before Techmeme [then tech.memeorandum] was publicly launched, i.e. before anyone believed they could get on the site by linking to stories. I’d also point out the idea of many headlines on a single major story is not a problem in and of itself. Consider that the iPhone unveiling will probably be one of the major stories for all of 2007. So on one day for it to account for 40 percent of the headlines on Techmeme is not all that out of whack“.

I’ve never thought the so-called echo-chamber was a problem either, so long as each blogger adds something to the story. An opinion. A context. Spin. Whatever.

That’s how the conversation develops the story, without being moderated or censored, which is what often happens in forums.

I always thought that was obvious, but you’d think otherwise by looking at some of the chest-beating over various pay-per-post initiatives. This method of advertising is nothing new, as we’ve seen in email lists ever since email lists started. Why are blogs being held to a different standard?

The real problem with pay-per-post, as far as I can see, is that advertisers aren’t offering near enough money yet! They do, however, seem happy to spend money on email lists. So what is the difference?

I am aware of one guy who expects to see $50,000 return for a single mailing list post. Perhaps that’s grandstanding, but some of the more popular mailing lists do earn substantial pay-per-post income. And have done for some time. Blogs have a long way to catch up.

Part of the outcry concerns disclosure. I can understand that point, from a journalisic perspective, however not all blogs are journalism, nor make any claim to be. Some blogs make no secret of the fact that they their content is commercial. So long as the reader is happy to read the occasional plug from the sponsor, then everyone is happy. But to say pay-per-post is evil because content is paid for is simply wrong.

The pay-per-post space already has a few companies jostling for position:

• Sponsored Reviews
  
• ReviewMe
• Pay Per Post

In the interests of full disclosure, I am being paid absolutely nothing, by the above mentioned companies, to write this post.

I am, however, paid by V7N to write this post.

So go buy some hosting. Or text link ads. Or something

Following on from my post yesterday about moving to Google Reader, there was some good feedback, worth repeating:

• Ben is developing a feed-reader, called Feedable, although it doesn’t seem to be available as yet?
• Bill pointed out an interesting study on feed reader interfaces
• dotTim pointed out that Bloglines marks everything as you read it. Agreed! I’m finding it really annoying that Google Reader doesn’t appear to do this…
• Sophie, like me, is caught between what she has been used to (Bloglines), and the alternatives.

So, what are the alternatives?

Here is a list of some of the more popular feed readers I’ve come across:

• Bloglines
• Google Reader
• FeedDemon
• Start
• My Yahoo
• Feedreader
• FeedLounge
• Rojo
• Netvibes
• Sage
• Pluck
• Gritwire
• News Alloy

I’d be interested to hear about your favorite, and why.

The significance of this news, to anyone, is dubious, so may as well make light of it:

• Google boss holidays in New Zealand, borrows Peter Jacksons plane, wears a Charlie Chaplin mask, then buggers off to Sydney. Possibly.
• DMOZ is accepting submissions again. The curious thing is, they’re saying “get in quick”, presumably before they’re irrevocably swamped twenty minutes later, until the end of time. Again.
• Battelle hits the headline trifecta. Although, for full marks, he needs to incorporate Godwin’s law in there somewhere.
• Numerous posts on (take your pick – how to succeed with blogging, make money blogging, get laid via blogging etc). All rubbish. Better to take a step back, solve a problem for someone, therefore getting the cart back in front of the horse, where it belongs

Top stories search bloggers reported this week:

1. Google Security Hole Allows Account Hijacking
2. Yahoo using dirty tactics: switching default homepage
3. Google testing new Adsense formats for some publishers
4. Google offers real-time stock quotes fro free
5. Google releases Google Earth v4
6. Top Ten gaining queries on Google
7. SEO is easy, hard, worthless, essential
8. 25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog
9. Page Rank Updates
10. Google issues more than just a bug?

I’ll make this my last post for the year.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and there’s a lot of beer and wine drinking to do. Someone has to do it, and that someone may as well be me!

Some people are making predictions for 2007.

I predict that 2007 will be much like 2006, and that people will still use the term “Google” a lot. I also see the launch of some interesting new services and collaborations. I think I can say that with a certain degree of confidence The crystal ball remains cloudy about everything else. Or perhaps that’s the condensation. What do you think will be big on the interweb next year?

Thanks a lot for reading my ramblings – I hope some of it was interesting and helped make your job a little easier. Have a great Christmas, and see you again next year.

Kia Ora.

Rich Skrenta, DMOZ-founder and all round good guy, gives us a look into what is happening behind DMOZ at the moment.

“Apparently the machine holding dmoz in AOL ops crashed. Standard backups had been discontinued for some reason; during unsuccessful attempts to restore some of the lost data, ops blew away the rest of the existing data on the system“

Sounds like a comedy act.

DMOZ was good once, and it gave us the seed of the idea that we could collaborate, Web 2.0 stylee, and build something that the corporations couldn’t. But it didn’t scale. They barricaded the walls. DMOZ just lost the plot.

I very much doubt the same people who run DMOZ now will be able to create and run a new directory that will make big waves. Doing so would mean competing with Wikipedia, and Google, and the thousands of other directories. Then again, perhaps someone, somewhere in the system has some vision.

They’re probably buried alongside pending submission #48851942….

Well, it’s Web 2.0, as in “Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world“.

“It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes….We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy”.

Well done, you.

OK, I got blog tagged by Sophie & Debra.

Here’s five things you may not know about me:

1. I have a Maine Coon cat named Annie. My friends think I’m nuts for spending $750 on a cat, until they meet Annie, then they all want to adopt steal her. Her job mostly involves generating a lot of fur, as good a test as any for domestic vacuum cleaners.

2. I’m married to Maria. She has a near inhuman level of tolerance for idiotic ideas.

3. Like Greg Boser, I played in hair bands in the 80’s. It was neither big, nor clever. My biggest love is music, and I play guitar, bass, and pretend to sing. I failed to get anywhere with the drums.

4. My second biggest love is food, and wine, and beer. I’m a great cook, if I do say so myself. I learned a lot from my grandmother, who was way better than I am. I was the only kid I knew who loved olives. This is a great book for simple, authentic Italian recipes. My favorite wine comes from here. I like Stella, and once spent an evening being driven all over Seattle looking for some. Needless to say, I wasn’t the one paying the cab fare (Microsoft was – yay Microsoft!)

5. I live in New Zealand, but I usually want to live everywhere I visit. I’m well traveled, which means I have developed a considerable loathing for the entire aviation industry. Getting off a plane in a place I’ve never seen before are two of lifes’ great pleasures.

I’ll tag: John, Brad, Rich, Andrew and Loren.

I’m not going to link to it. There’s a childish “controversy” going on in the SEO/Blog community, which I suspect is yet more link baiting. Do your own digging, but I can assure you, it’s not worth your time.

The problem I find with these “look-at-me” link bait schemes is this – the credibility of the participants drops. It’s all getting a bit tired.

Are the writers writing about something that might interest me, or help me, or inform me? Or are they writing purely to attract links? I guess they might try and argue “both”. I’d say few people can do both well, and it shows.

It’s already backfiring on these guys. If they care that little about the people who read their stuff, they don’t deserve to have people reading their stuff.