Techmeme and TechCrunch's Detractors Prove It's Hard to be On Top

One downside of being in a visible leadership position is that you often have a bulls-eye on your back. Sometimes it's from your competition. Sometimes it's from people who feel what you offer isn't benefitting themselves personally, and other times, it can arguably be your biggest fans, who want to change what it is you do to serve their whim of the day. In the tech blogosphere, there is no single blog more influential and visible than TechCrunch, and there is no single aggregator or news site more influential and visible than Techmeme. That the two's fortunes are at times seen as being closely linked only helps to fuel the flames of frustration by those eager to see change, be it through finding alternative sources for news, or, instead, asking for either site to change its tone, its breadth of coverage, or its methodology.

From a third party point of view, it seems the day in and day out potshots against both Techmeme and TechCrunch have taken their toll on the most visible representatives of each site. Techmeme's Gabe Rivera is well-known for his sarcastic, evasive, answers when his site's reputation is questioned, and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is often described as short-fused and sleep deprived. Recently rumors have circulated saying Arrington wants out of the blogging business, and is looking to sell, no doubt in part due to stress of the "always on" atmosphere and ruthless competition. Of course, rumors are simply rumors... but given most PR firms have gotten to the point where reaching out to TechCrunch is part of their standard shtick, it's likely not as fun fielding all the inquiries and sticking to others' schedules as openly writing once was. And TechCrunch has burned through its share of strong writers, with talents like Marshall Kirkpatrick and Duncan Riley leaving, one on good terms, and the other, not as well, as it turned out. (See: On Arrington, My Final Word)

The two sites' major detractors tend to rail on common topics. TechCrunch can be seen as egocentric, and Arrington is perceived to have a bee-line on exclusives. Techmeme similarly has been described as elitist by those who don't get included, navel-gazing by those who think it's too insular, biased by those who feel they have been overlooked, or a single person's playground, by those who feel Gabe's claims to automation are overblown. And some industry blog veterans who regularly appear on Techmeme have even taken to saying it's not as relevant and influential as it once was, replaced by other sources of news.

The complaints around either service became so commonplace that a new word, bitchmeme, was made, loosely defined as "bitching about Techmeme", usually on the weekend, when some tech bloggers had no news to write about. The phrase since took on a life of its own, meaning any silly conflict between blogs that took place on the weekend.

TechCrunch and Techmeme get as much grumpiness tossed their direction as they do because they each own a valuable niche in the blogosphere, and are expanding their lead, rather than relinquishing it. While you could say that TechCrunch competes with ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, GigaOM or others, they have cemented themselves as the go-to site for new services entering the market, and even their opinion pieces are widely read, with almost a million unique RSS subscribers taking note. Techmeme's best competition at this point is BlogRunner, with Hacker News, Dave Winer's TechJunk, Duncan Riley's QMeme and more organic sites like RSSmeme or ReadBurner coming up in conversation. But Techmeme's original perceived competition, like TailRank and Megite, are mere shadows of what they initially promised. Meanwhile, TechCrunch is bringing on new writers, and posting more stories than ever (See: The Statbot: TechCrunch Statistics A-W), and Techmeme is going more mainstream, with news sources like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times featuring more prominently than most individual bloggers.

And with this leadership position, the sites don't have the luxury of acting without criticism any longer. Gabe almost has a part-time position made for himself just to go from blog to blog and explaining that in fact, Techmeme is not evil, and that it is relevant, explaining that TechCrunch has built a reputation as a reputable source for tech news, and therefore, is adequately represented on his site and in the leaderboard. Seemingly every day, Gabe is having to answer questions on Twitter or FriendFeed from people like Robert Scoble (or me in one example, when I wondered why a hot topic wasn't getting airtime). Meanwhile, Arrington gets called nasty names, mocked by Valleywag, and yelled at on Twitter.

But if you take a step back, TechCrunch's goal is to be a technology blog focused on Web 2.0, and it's doing that. Techmeme's stated goal is to be like the front page of the memes that are happening in the tech blogosphere at any given time, and for the large part, it does do that. While there is some uncertainty as to all the criteria that makes up being part of Techmeme, or rising up and down the page, or when something makes the site, it typically takes discussion, not only on the original site, but through links from other blogs, on Twitter, and other sharing sites.

The argument could be made that you could possibly find your technology news faster in another way. Maybe you could find it on FriendFeed, and get a broader scope of sources. Maybe you prefer the democratic approach of ReadBurner and RSSmeme. Maybe you want to go through Google Reader yourself, or rely on others' shared link blogs. But there is no question in my mind that Techmeme is relevant, as is TechCrunch, and being mentioned on either site continues to drive traffic today.

I also believe that Techmeme does a very good job at being available to those bloggers who aren't elite household names. Just tonight, we saw a blog that was born only three days ago make the site, and Yuvi Panda's work on The Statbot shows one third of all Techmeme headlines come from the "Long Tail". Techmeme is accessible to bloggers who write quality content and spur discussion. While I'm absolutely active in places like FriendFeed and Twitter, I don't believe that discussions from FriendFeed belong on Techmeme any more than do popular Twitter posts or popular YouTube videos. Techmeme has specialized in bringing us top tech blogging news, and it's doing it.

The bottom line? If you don't like Techmeme and you don't like TechCrunch, stop reading, or go out and make your own. The best way to show they're no longer relevant is to take them down yourself through competition. But today, they are both standing strong whether you like it or not. I just hope Mike Arrington and Gabe Rivera are enjoying what they do as much as when they first started, and that the daily body blows haven't gotten them so jaded that they want out, for that would be a big loss.

RSSmeme Creator Served With Legal Threat Over RSS Shares

The foundation of RSS is in its syndication (the second 'S'). A feed, published from one location, can be read in a different location, whether it be a feed reader, a blog widget, a lifestreaming application or any number of aggregation services. The simplicity in sharing has also led some to worry about where their content goes when they hit "Publish", as, often, they lose control over where it can go.

Today, RSSmeme's Benjamin Golub, who has developed a tracker for the most popular shared items on Google Reader, saw one unhappy publisher threaten him with legal action after she had found her feed included in the service.

The RSSmeme service utilizes Google Reader's shared link blogs as its underlying database. Those items that receive the most shares from Google Reader rise to the top, and Benjamin, over the last few months, has updated the service to sort by categories, by languages, and highlight the most active users and tags. But one thing he doesn't do is hand-select the content displayed. That's done by the thousands and thousands of people using Google Reader every day, and sharing new items. So when he received a takedown request by e-mail, he was a little surprised.

Talking with him by phone this afternoon, he said the complainant's feed had only been shared two times, by a single sharer. But she had essentially penned an e-mail saying to "remove all content, or I will send a lawyer."

Not eager to have legal trouble, Benjamin removed the offending shares, and recommended to the publisher that her feeds be set to broadcast as partial feeds, not full feeds, assuming she was concerned her content was being stolen, or used in a commercial way. Benjamin told me that he anticipated such a threat might happen once he posted ads on the RSSmeme site, but said with rising Web hosting costs, monetizing in some way soon became necessity.

"When I started RSSmeme, it only cost $20 a month, and (due to site growth), it doesn't cost that much any more," he told me. Since launch, costs have more than tripled, and the Google-sourced ads are used to offset any out of pocket expenses.

While Benjamin considers his options, at the time, he has globally altered settings on RSSmeme to show only the excerpts of feeds, removing the ability to read an entire blog post on the site, the same approach taken by Shyftr back in April when similar complaints arose.

The issue of how RSS-enabled content is monetized, where comments lie, and who has full control over blog entries isn't going away any time soon. Even if Benjamin never hears back from the woman threatening to take him to court, it's definitely got him rattled, and once again is stirring up discussion, as you can see on FriendFeed.

ReadBurner Revamps Stats Pages, Expanding Shared Items Analysis

The ReadBurner team continues to make enhancements to the popular Web site dedicated to showing the most popular items shared on Google Reader and Netvibes. Tonight, in advance of their weekly podcast, featuring MG Siegler of ParisLemon and VentureBeat as a guest, they are rolling out upgrade statistics showing the most popular sources, displaying the average number of shares per story for a given author or source in the system.

In a change from the service's previous methodology, the new reports are intended to reward consistency, meaning that a site won't gain from one-time spikes around a popular story, and won't get more prominence due to a higher frequency of posting.


The new stats, seen at http://www.readburner.com/stats, come only a week after RSSmeme debuted new sidebar widgets that show the top tags and top users for the day, as well as widgets that can show who are the most frequent sharers of a specific blog. You can see the "Top Sharers" on the right side of this page to see who shares content from louisgray.com, as well as the tags I use the most to describe my posts.

Both sites are making strides to expand away from simply counting the data to helping analyze it. Both sites also gave a nod today to the morning's news that Chris Wetherell, the main architect behind the amazing Google Reader, will be leaving the company. Had it not been for his efforts, and Google Reader's growth, neither site would exist.

These, and other topics, will undoubtedly be part of the night's discussion with MG. You can tune in here.

Giving a Service Wings By Pushing Them from the Nest

For those of us blogging who like to break the news by announcing new services, and using our site as their platform to debut, it can be tempting to pull an "old world" journalism mentality and claim that topic as "our turf", resenting anybody else who tries to step in and steal the thunder by posting the news first, or even feeling betrayed if the entrepreneur takes the news somewhere else. But I've seen that after what I consider an incubation period, the fastest-growing services do best when I can step back and let them take their first steps away from the nest, as they engage with other bloggers, gaining them a new audience and greater exposure.

In this analogy, it can be nerve-wracking to see the little ones as they leave the nest. I worry the new caregivers might not see them in the same way I do. The new influencer might be cruel or may not recognize their talents. But to try and protect them by keeping them in the nest could stunt their growth.

As mentioned in yesterday's popular post, the first stage of being an early adopter can at times be indistinguishable from the service's PR or Marketing firm, as you try to make a product you like extremely visible. You've no doubt seen me do this, as I'll not just help by introducing a product, but keeping you posted on its updates, from Assetbar to ReadBurner, FriendFeedMachine, RSSmeme and Toluu.

But there comes a time when the right thing to do is let go, when the service has gained such momentum that I instead suggest the developer reach out to other sites to get a broader perspective and more exposure, so that their service is less tied in with me, and seen, instead as more of the broader landscape.

Don't get me wrong. I love exclusives, and part of my journalism background makes the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I know that someone who might be considered competition is writing about the same topic at the same time with the same deadline. But lately, for services that have gotten some traction, I've opted out of story opportunities and encouraged the developer to get some new voices talking instead.

A prime example of this was with Toluu yesterday. On Wednesday, Caleb Elston reached out to me with some great new service updates, including details on subscriptions within Toluu by feed, and story popularity, in part helped by AideRSS. I told Caleb that instead of waiting for me, to take his outreach to the next level, and it worked, without question. Yesterday ended up being a record-setting day for Toluu, after what Hutch Carpenter called a great example of social media marketing, by participating and reaching out to bloggers and following Toluu references on both FriendFeed and Twitter.

Similarly, RSSmeme announced options to find similar sharers of data to you, and integrated widgets on each page that show top tags and sharers for that blog or topic. See: Using RSSmeme To Find Similar Sharers: Louis Gray’s Example. Having just given RSSmeme a ton of credit last Saturday on being the authority on Google Reader sharing notes, I again waved the white flag, and told Benjamin to spread the word. He did, leveraging a custom room on FriendFeed for RSSmeme, to update followers, also adding RSSmeme as a user of the service, and today, leveraging the FriendFeed API to speed up the site.

You can see how other services have taken steps to leave the nest, as other sites, often much bigger than mine, take up the rallying cry:

ReadBurner:
The Inquisitr: ReadBurner Gets Digg Like Features

Shyftr:
Mashable: Shyftr Beats Google Reader with OPML Imports

LinkRiver:
SheGeeks: LinkRiver is My Personal Techmeme

Part of being a good partner to new services is knowing when to let go, and to see if the service has wings. A few weeks ago, I wrote to one pair of entrepreneurs, "Let me know if there's anything else I can do, but I do believe it's going to come down to you guys being more visible." With everything else that's going on, I can't possibly do it all myself. That's why, even though it can be bittersweet on occasion, the right thing to do is let them take a risk and let go. It gives others, like Corvida, the opportunity to do a social media roundup on service updates, and it's best for the community at large.

RSSMeme is the Authority on Google Reader Sharing Notes

One month after the Google Reader team added the capability to add personal notes to shared items from RSS feeds, it hasn't been entirely clear whether this feature has been a tremendous success, a dud, or somewhere in between. But Benjamin Golub, author of RSSmeme, a shared items tabulator and statistics tracker, has amassed a wealth of data on these notes, which puts RSSmeme to the forefront as far as a resource for measuring their use.

I personally may share a few dozen stories on my Google Reader shared items feed per day. But I have, so far, stayed away from adding notes to the items I share, preferring to let those who may follow my feed get the item, uncluttered by my own graffiti. In fact, I am less willing to reshare an item from another person's link blog whom I am subscribed to for that same reason, not wanting to pass their own notes to my readers.


But while I'm lagging in my early adopter responsibilities, Golub reports that nearly 30,000 shared items in Google Reader that flowed through RSSmeme were tagged with notes in the last month, just over 13% of all stories. (See: More Google Reader Notes Statistics) The average item with notes had 1.44 notes per story, meaning there is a 44% chance that once an item gets a note, it will get a second one also. These 42,000+ notes, Benjamin shows, were created by just over 4,200 users, at 10 notes apiece, or one per individual user every three days.

While I've not yet embraced the notes, I have embraced RSSmeme's showing me when people added a note to my own items. Through use of the product's FeedFlare, I can see not just how many shares an item has, but I can see if it has notes, and click through to see what somebody said about my post. Now, if I see "Shared 15 times with one note", I often click on the alert and am directed to RSSmeme's dedicated item page to see who said what. Rather than subscribe to a boatload of linkblogs, RSSmeme can act as the conduit between the blog author and the person sharing and noting.

Is RSSmeme's cool integration enough for me to start adding my notes to Google Reader shared items? Probably not. As Drew Olanoff of ReadBurner noted on our weekly podcast earlier, I am already pushing a lot of new items in and sharing every day. I don't think I need to add commentary to each one. But for those who like it, and aren't acting as a fountain of noise, RSSmeme's capabilities are very useful.

ReadBurner Adds Widgets, Accelerating Shared Items Race

ReadBurner, the popular Google Reader shared items tracker, has recently undergone a series of enhancements making it a must-visit Web utility, enabling Web connoisseurs to find the most popular news items, see posts that are rising in awareness, and learn what sites or individuals are the most actively shared or most active link blog users.

Following the acquisition of ReadBurner from Alexander Marktl by Drew Olanoff, Thomas Connors and Adam Ostrow, the team has buckled down to introduce a new, flashy interface for the site, both on the Web and for iPhones (which works great on my iPod Touch), and on a near-weekly basis, has new updates worth noting.

In the last few weeks alone:
* ReadBurner added a page for "Breaking News"
* ReadBurner added a Breaking news feed on Twitter. (@ReadBurnerRSS)
* ReadBurner started a weekly podcast.
* ReadBurner added support for Netvibes.

Today, ReadBurner is adding a host of widgets, which will undoubtedly be popular in the blogging community, as you can now display how often your content has been shared, how often, as an author, your items are shared, or even how many total shares you've posted to your link blog and seen added to the service.


A ReadBurner widget for shares from louisgray.com.

A ReadBurner widget for all shares on my Google Shared items blog.

The new widgets can be found on any ReadBurner page for an author, a source, or a link blog. From any page, for example, for louisgray.com or "Louis Gray's Link Blog", you will now see a widget in the top right corner with a simple "Get This" button. Click the button, and you're taken to a dedicated page with a single line of JavaScript code, which can be embedded into your blog, just like the extremely popular FeedBurner statistics.


Grabbing the code for embedding into the blog is simple.

The widgets are an interesting salvo in the continued back and forth with Benjamin Golub's similarly popular RSSmeme, which, for now, has a leg up in showing share counts by specific items back to the blog. I for one, will be adding total ReadBurner shares to the blog and keeping the RSSmeme FeedFlare for the posts, until continued innovation from one site or another changes my mind.

Be sure you go get your own widgets at www.readburner.com.

RSSMeme Creator Launches Tweet2Tweet to Watch Twitter Discussion

The rapid-fire element of Twitter can absolutely obliterate any resemblance of a tidy conversation, as updates from a wide array of disparate users will interrupt the discussion between one or more people, especially if the conversation takes place over a little bit of time, rather than seeing second by second updates common on IRC or other chat rooms.

Benjamin Golub, the developer behind the popular Google Reader shared links aggregator RSSMeme, debuted a solution called Tweet2Tweet today, which lets you search on any two Twitter user IDs, and pull up their discussion, even if the Tweets ended up only being one-way.


Tweet2Tweet's query interface
The data, powered by Summize, which is growing on me as a must-visit tool multiple times a day to query for specific terms I track, shows in a two-column format:

* Who initiated the conversation
* The full content of each Tweet.
* The timing of each Tweet, including a link.
* The in-line response from the second participant.

Now, instead of hitting the Twitter "Replies" tab to see what people have said in response to your notes, or hitting the "Conversation" tab in Summize to see just one exchange, you can now see all exchanges between two people, over the available period in Tweet2Tweet's database.

A few good examples:

Tweet2Tweet: @louisgray and @fourlittlebees
Tweet2Tweet: @loiclemeur and @centernetworks


A quick look at some of my conversations with @fourlittlebees
Having just launched today, Tweet2Tweet will undoubtedly see the same level of improvements that RSSMeme has enjoyed over the last several months. In my testing, I would occasionally see only one half of a conversation, or find empty results, especially when querying the most-active Twitter users. But it's a start, and a good one at that. Corvida of SheGeeks also looked at it earlier today and found it to be much like Facebook's Wall to Wall feature.

Where Are They Now? A Look at A Dozen Services That Debuted Here

Near the end of 2007, I first came across a service I had hoped would one day challenge Google Reader for the throne of coolest RSS feed reader, Assetbar. With social aspects including shared statistics and comments, it had the potential to become the future of where RSS feed readers were going. While that hasn't yet come to pass, it did mark the first time a service debuted on LouisGray.com.

In the ensuing 9 months or so, I've been lucky enough to either stumble upon, or get engaged with entrepreneurs early enough in the process, such that this site was where they first got started. Some of them have gone on to incredible visibility and success. One has already closed shop. Another looks dormant, and others, somewhere in between. I'll hold off on giving a rating, or "stars" assigned to their success, but believe me, it's tempting.

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Assetbar
Debut: September 17, 2007
Post: Assetbar Set to Launch With Google Reader Inspiration

The Goal: To deliver a next-generation RSS feed reader with integrated commenting, shared link lists, and the ability to see if friends had seen or liked an article.

Status: After gaining the attention of ReadWriteWeb and Mashable, as well as a few follow-up stories here, Assetbar gained several hundred users, but rather than rocketing upward in popularity, issues with the confusing user interface, and prioritizing features over speed had even early adopters not sticking around. The site's gone into something of hibernation and maintenance mode, while the developers consider where to take their participatory social media platform next.

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BlogRize
Debut: April 7, 2008
Post: BlogRize Builds A Community Around Your Blog and its Readers

The Goal: Build a community around a blog, and find new interesting items.

Status: Recently profiled by ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez, who is everywhere, BlogRize has hundreds of users joining communities like ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and LouisGray.com to see what others like them are sharing and commenting on. Updates so far have been somewhat quiet, thanks to developer Jesse Spaulding's recent move to Seattle.

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LinkRiver
Debut: February 13, 2008
Post: LinkRiver Enters Life Streaming Fray, Focused on Link Blogs

The Goal: To let friends follow shared items activity from multiple people in one place.

Status: LinkRiver has a big fan in Corvida of SheGeeks (LinkRiver Is My Personal Techmeme), and with interesting wrinkles including Attention data, which tracks what you share most often, and the ability to tag items for later viewing, developer Adam Stiles has created a lightweight (in a good way), informative site to find the most popular items of the day, or to see what friends are sharing, without the noise of some other social aggregators.

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MergeLab
Debut: March 4, 2008
Post: Mergelab Emerges to Streamline Friends' Web Updates

The Goal: To follow friends' activity on the Web in a single location.

Status: Mergelab announced last Friday that the site would close down by the end of June. Without revenue, and with competition, the decision was made to exit the game early.

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Rating Burner
Debut: January 30, 2008
Post: Rating Burner Debuts With RSS Feed Ranking, Growth Stats

The Goal: To show the most popular FeedBurner feeds, and daily changes.

Status: While not widely known, Rating Burner is quietly doing its job, adding more and more feeds to its library. The developer even added the option to display a Rating Burner badge on your blog so you can show your own ranking from the site.

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ReadBurner
Debut: January 7, 2008
Post: ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items

The Goal: Find the most common shared items in Google Reader.

Status: ReadBurner took off like a phoenix, but after gaining rave reviews from across the Web, the site's lead developer shut down the site, only to see a trio of entrepreneurs, including Mashable's Adam Ostrow, buy its technology and get it up and running again. ReadBurner 2.0 debuted on April 15th and has continued to innovate, issuing an iPhone version of the site, and today, adding support for shared items from NetVibes.

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RSSmeme
Debut: February 6, 2008
Post: RSSmeme Debuts as ReadBurner Clone

The Goal: Find the most common shared items in Google Reader

Status: RSSmeme took advantage of ReadBurner's downtime, and has more shared link blogs in play than anybody else on the Web. RSSmeme also debuted helpful integration for bloggers who want to show how often their items have been shared, and recently integrated notes from Google Reader.

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Shyftr
Debut: March 4, 2008
Post: Shyftr Offers Social RSS Reading, Including Comments, Rankings

The Goal: Develop a RSS Feed Reader for friends to share favorite items and make comments.

Status: Shyftr recently added OPML importing, on the back of debuting shared link blogs, making it even more competitive with Google Reader, as Mark Hopkins of Mashable and the Download Squad noted. The service still has a way to go to get in the mainstream, and it will take some time for them to escape the dubious honor of getting Bitchmemed last month, but they continue to work hard.

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SocialMedian
Debut: April 8, 2008
Post: Former Jobster CEO's Social|Median Incubating in Alpha

The Goal: A social news service, personalized based on your favorite topics.

Status: As mentioned Tuesday, SocialMedian is seeing strong growth, even in their alpha stage, growing to 2,599 alpha users, as of this post. The growth in the user base has resulted in a higher amount of interesting news, more clipped items, and the GUI has gotten much stronger in the last month.

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TheStatBot
Debut: May 1, 2008
Post: The StatBot Launches to Analyze Blog and Web Trends, Statistics

The Goal: To analyze blog trends and statistics with insightful commentary.

Status: Yuvi Panda is now posting 2 to 3 new articles a week, starting with Scoble's Twitter feed, and now, dissecting Digg and the Techmeme Leaderboard. His latest post, from Tuesday, highlights those sites most likely to be in the "Discussion" section of TechMeme, not a featured item.

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Toluu
Debut: March 24, 2008
Post: Toluu Offers Gateway to Friends' RSS Feeds, Recommends New Ones

The Goal: Share your OPML with friends and find new feeds.

Status: Growing like a weed, Caleb Elston's pet project has ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez enamored and just yesterday, Elston announced he continues to upgrade the site, deleting more than 60,000 duplicate feeds, the kind of attention to important detail that has people coming back again and again.

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Yokway
Debut: March 2, 2008
Post: YokWay! Weeks Away from Launching "Digg for Friends"-like Service

The Goal: Share items, videos, and pictures with friends and have conversations.

Status: According to Yokway insiders, traffic to the site is catching up to FriendFeed and beating out SocialMedian, but aside from my coverage, and that from the Last Podcast, they haven't had nearly the exposure of FriendFeed, so that would be a surprise to me. The site has a few hundred visitors, from what I can tell, most activity is still from a select few dozen. Over the last 24 hours, there were 25 items shared for discussion. While the user interface is interesting, as is the application, it hasn't yet gained a lot of public awareness.

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While this list is long, it's certainly a speck compared to that which blog powers like TechCrunch could debut. I've been lucky to play the role of early adopter, and there are a few more items out there cooking which should show up soon. But on the whole, I'm pretty pleased with the efforts made by just about every single one of the players above. ReadBurner and Toluu for starters, changed the game. Others are must-visit sites for me. But in this fast-moving industry, if you're not fast-moving, you might as well quit. I'm looking forward to keeping this going.

Disqus' Excellent Customer Service Enables Comments Integration

Disqus is seeing a meteoric rise as the default comments management system for the Web, enabling bloggers to deliver threaded comments, and track their own commenting activity throughout the blogosphere. Recently, Disqus has made a lot of headway through integration with popular social networking tools, including RSSMeme, ReadBurner, Fav.or.it and Plaxo.

But while I had tried earlier this month to get Disqus up and running, the way I use Blogger, with a customized template, along with FTP publishing to louisgray.com, got in my way. But overnight, with some incredible help from Disqus' Daniel Ha, the site now features Disqus comments for all posts, without losing the existing comments from previous conversations.

Disqus is designed to offer bloggers simple installation, be they on Wordpress, Blogger or TypePad. But by default, it assumes a user has upgraded to the newest edition of Blogger, featuring greater widget control, customized layouts and templates. As I have made numerous changes to my template in raw HTML, I haven't made this change, and Blogger hasn't made it easy for me to move to the new service, not making it available for FTP-hosted blogs like mine.

So essentially, I thought I would remain Disqus-free, saying so last night on Twitter. But showing incredible awareness, Daniel Ha of Disqus, said "How can we make it easier for you?"

We traded direct messages and e-mail, and he quickly understood the issue, offering to patch it manually.

Daniel came back with his first solution this morning, but that solution wouldn't have displayed old comments, which would be a showstopper for me, so I balked, asked for him to keep working on it, and again, he said he'd give it a shot. He wrote, "I will take a look into how to display the comments for older articles and let you know ASAP."

Just seven minutes later, he sent me an updated template, which now lets all blog entries, such as this one, use Disqus for comments. And all previous posts will also display Disqus comments, underneath existing conversations. At the moment, this change makes it look like the posts don't have existing comments, but they do, and over time, the Disqus comments will populate the data here, instead of Blogger's comments.

If Daniel hadn't been listening, and willing to give my "corner case" some real effort on a Saturday morning, we wouldn't have been able to get Disqus up and running. This is a great example of next-generation customer service, and engaging. Of course, if you see any oddities related to the new Disqus usage on louisgray.com, please do let me know. I'm listening, and so is Daniel...

ReadBurner Fired Back Up With Revamped GUI, Reader Integration

ReadBurner is back... with a serious makeover
The short history of ReadBurner, Alexander Marktl's pet project aimed at finding the most shared items on Google Reader has already been one of many twists and turns. First, it was discovered before planned launch, forcing Marktl into a wild one day scramble. The site rapidly gained followers, and competition, aiming to seize onto the shared links tabulating trend. But suddenly, Marktl went silent and on March 5th, said he was to shut the site down for good, or so we thought, only to see it resurrected less than ten days later, following the site's acquisition.

Now, under new ownership, ReadBurner is back with a bang, offering a dramatically improved UI, and a wealth of new features highlighting popular items and sources, as well as the most innovative new wrinkle, full integration of Google Reader within the site, making it more sticky as a destination site than ever, and keeping it one step ahead of Benjamin Golub's RSSMeme, who in ReadBurner's absence, aggregated more shared links feeds than anybody outside the walled garden of Facebook, where Mario Romero's Feedheads app reigns supreme.

The first thing you'll notice with the new and improved ReadBurner is its shiny Web 2.0 look, courtesy of PixelTalent. The new site embraces bright neon orange and blue, making it tempting to wear shades simply to browse the site. Maybe that's the idea, as ReadBurner tries to take what's honestly a very geeky application, on the fringe of blog reading and recommending, and make it seem "cool". Let's be honest though, talking up ReadBurner at most parties outside of Silicon Valley won't get you too many dates.

There are three major ways to filter the news, from the Popular (most shared in the last 48 hours), Upcoming (most shared in the last 24 hours) and Most Recent (a fire hose of shared items in near real-time). This is not new. But what is new is the way ReadBurner has now developed Categories (including an Apple category), Sub-Categories and in a TechMeme-like shift, "Related Items". Now, stories in the system are viewed based on their content, and they can be grouped together in story listings and individual item pages.

For example, Steven Hodson's WinExtra post (ReadBurner link) features similar stories from Mashable and SheGeeks. The other stories may not actually link to Steven in the way TechMeme's grouped stories tend to, but they are on the same wavelength.


ReadBurner shows related items.
Also new for ReadBurner is the ability for a blog owner to track their own site and how often items are shared. RSSMeme has long had this feature, (see: RSSMeme/louisgray.com) and now ReadBurner is doing the same (see: ReadBurner/louisgray.com). I've found this approach to be a good measure, beyond page views, as to which stories are best reaching my audience.


An item from louisgray.com on ReadBurner.
But while this seems intriguing on its own, the new ReadBurner team isn't done. From day one in version 2.0, they've added comments capability with Disqus integration (yes on the headlines and excerpt only, not the full story), as well as detailed statistics showing the top sources, as measured by total shares per story published (Example: 50 shares divided by 8 stories would have a score of 6.25). Unsurprisingly, like with TechMeme and RSSMeme, the household names are dominating this list, from TechCrunch to ReadWriteWeb, Lifehacker, Boing Boing and Gizmodo leading the way.

And integrating Google Reader is a great touch. Why go just to the Google Reader site if I can be one click away from ReadBurner? In combination, the pair offer a compelling destination for RSS goodness. I'd considered suggesting to the FriendFeed team that they should go the same way, but ReadBurner looks to have beaten them to the punch.


ReadBurner and Google Reader as one.
Outside of Feedheads, ReadBurner kicked off this rush to shared link aggregation, and with the help of a few friends, it should be back and on course. Be sure to watch the site closely as they continue to add users, tweak the algorithm and find new ways for distributors to leverage their data. We will be. Check them out at www.readburner.com.

Alpha Twitter Ranks Most Popular Shared Links from Twitter

Much like ReadBurner, Feedheads and RSSMeme have set about tabulating the most popular shared items in Google Reader, and letting users know who shared what, a new service called Alpha Twitter is aiming to offer the same service to Twitter users, showing what the most popular "Tweeted" items are today, yesterday, this week, or even all time.

The developer, Luis Figueiredo, (LouMcAfee on Twitter), inspired by a number of other social link sharing services to gain the Web by storm this year, is aiming to fill a hole, helping us gain insight into the thoughts of Twitter Nation.


Today's top shared links on Twitter (Alpha Twitter)
As he wrote me in an e-mail today:

"Services like FriendFeed are indeed very useful and i've always would like to see a service that would display the popular links that are being shared by Twitter users. Such a service didn't exist and there was nothing like it out there, so I've decided to create my own."

The service, Alpha Twitter, is drop-dead simple to use, and to view. But what it lacks in style, it makes up for in simplicity. As with ReadBurner and other sites, it simply adds up how often URLs are shared, and aggregates the data over a 24-hour period. Those with the most shares go to the top. You can even click through the number of shares and see just who "tweeted" the item, and when they did it, which gives you an idea who has the fastest thumbs out there. And just a few days in, the service has already indexed more than a quarter-million Twitter links. It even got a quick mention from Michael Arrington on TechCrunch in a story about TwitLinks.

Figueiredo said Alpha Twitter simply parses all Twitter messages in the public time line, so pages are updated in real-time. The engine parses all Twitter messages in the timeline, searching for the string of "http://" and qualifying messages as containing links. And the service is even smart enough to decipher URL shortening services, including TinyURL. All the URLs and user names of who shared the links are then stored in a database.

The service, which is extremely new, is in the late alpha stage now, and is entering beta this week, Figueiredo says. But it already works now. And we can avoid any concerns about yet another service trying to make money off your content. Luis isn't in it for a buck, but instead says he is providing the site as a service to the community. You can check it out at www.alphatwitter.com or check out his blog at alphatwitter.com/blog.

RSSMeme Helps Bloggers Know What Their Readers Like

RSSMeme, now two months old, has carved out an interesting niche in the shared links aggregation market, first forged by Mario Romero's FeedHeads application on Facebook, and later seeing ReadBurner and RSSMeme crowd in for availability on the Internet as a whole.

One of RSSMeme's so-far unique options is for a blog author to drill down and see how frequently each of their own blog posts have been shared on Google Reader link blogs. For those authors who have a variety of topics, RSSMeme can help gain yet another level of insight into what readers are finding most interesting, as well as saying what topics should be avoided in the future. As RSSMeme has the largest easily accessible library of Google Reader shared link blogs, it provides a good sounding board for the many popular tech blogs users are subscribed to.

To be counted among the most popular shared items on RSSMeme, an item would need at least 50 shares to achieve the weekly leaderboard, and nearly 100 shares for the all-time leaderboard. But for small fry like me, I can tell that one of my own items can be considered "popular" when it has as many as a dozen shares, and most popular items occasionally cross the 20 threshold. (See my RSSMeme page here)

Looking at my dedicated RSSMeme page, of the 20 items listed there, I had a total of 232 shares (as of 5 p.m. Sunday), for an average of 11.6 shares per item. Of these 20 items, five had as many as 18 shares or more apiece, including "Our Unborn Kids Will Wear Your Web 2.0 Schwag (18)", "LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel (20)", "In Blogging and RSS, Headlines Can be Make or Break (19)", "Duncan Riley Misses the Point of FriendFeed (19)" and "ReadBurner to Return With New Ownership (21)". Each of these items had a technology/Web feel to it, as did those items which fell just behind.

On the other side of things, three posts only had one measly share. Of those three, two were stories I wrote about baseball, and one was about having to use my old PowerBook. As Yuvi Panda, the once and future stat king, wrote me not too long ago, "One thing that you seem to like writing about but people don’t really pay too much attention to is sports." Looks like he was right.

This level of disparity becomes even more pronounced with the more popular subscribed blogs.

TechCrunch's last 20 items range from 3 and 4 shares for a pair of stories on Yahoo! to 72 and 81 shares for a pair of stories on FriendFeed. (See: RSSMeme: TechCrunch)

ReadWriteWeb's last 20 items show one item on Microsoft's SilverLight gained only 2 shares, while a review of Toluu racked up 45 and Sarah Perez's comments on good UI design got 70. (See: RSSMeme: Read/Write Web)

And Robert Scoble bottoms out at 2 shares for highlighting a recent video with Mashable, but peaks at 86 for revealing the secret to Twitter. Other hot topics gaining about 40 shares each was a post saying FriendFeed would trump TechMeme or Google Reader, and saying TechCrunch's Michael Arrington had the wrong goals for assembling a "Dream Team". ( See: RSSMeme: Scobleizer.com)

RSSMeme has done more than just tally the most popular shared items on Google Reader, and display publicly available link blogs. You can now visit any shared blog's dedicated page, and get a visual approximation for how frequently the site's readers are hitting share in Google Reader, and what topics those who read RSS feeds like.

If you have a blog with an RSS feed, I encourage you to go to www.rssmeme.com, do a search for your name, and see what your readers like. It'll even tell you who shared what, and isn't that the kind of direct feedback you're looking for?

Did ReadBurner Acquisition Cause Conflict of Interest for Mashable?

On Friday, I was excited to announce that Alexander Marktl's excellent shared links aggregator and ranking site, ReadBurner, had been resurrected, following its acquisition by Adam Ostrow of Mashable, Drew Olanoff, and Eric Kerr. But given the social link aggregation space is a growing one with multiple entrants, including RSSMeme, Feedheads, LinkRiver, Shared Reader and others, some were concerned that Mashable's involvement in the deal would spell bias in their coverage, essentially compromising their editorial independence.

So rather than guess at what might happen going forward, I asked Mashable myself, sending an e-mail to Adam Ostrow, reporter Mark Hopkins, and Pete Cashmore. I specifically asked: "How do you think readers or competitors to ReadBurner could be assured that there's no funny stuff?" and "Is Adam now off the case for link aggregators?"

Unsurprisingly, the Mashable team had considered the potential for assumed bias prior to announcing the acquisition, and Ostrow said he was specifically hesitant to post the news on Mashable, "given how much I despise the conflicts of interest that some others engage in," he said. Ostrow also said that he was in fact going to remove himself from commenting on direct competitors, like RSSMeme and LinkRiver, and doesn't expect to be blogging on Mashable about ReadBurner much in the future.

In the event that there is announcement-worthy news on ReadBurner, Ostrow anticipates passing the news to Hopkins (or another Mashable reporter) and letting them determine its impact.

He adds, "As someone that sorts through hundreds of BS press releases on a daily basis, I think I'll have a pretty good idea of what's newsworthy and what's not, and limit myself to announcing stuff only when we have something cool to show off."

Hopkins also mentioned that with the ReadBurner acquisition, the Mashable team is especially sensitive to not overhype the announcement, and also to extend coverage to others in the space. A good example of this was Friday's story on RSSMeme's new widget, which Mark said was posted partly "to show we weren't going to play unfairly." He adds, "There is usually a ceiling to how high a certain niche can grow, but ReadBurner and RSSMeme both are nowhere near that ceiling in terms of users or traffic. These types of stories of this class of startup always generate a lot of interest and traffic for us, and if it builds interest in the genre, that's also good business for Adam."

Despite the fact it might be good business for Ostrow and his new ReadBurner team, Mashable, on its face, looks to be doing the right thing in addressing potential claims of bias. They anticipate some activities need to be "slightly adjusted to avoid an appearance of impopriety," Hopkins said.

The involvement of a blogger/journalist like Ostrow in a business transaction like the ReadBurner acquisition is unusual, but one I believe was born out of belief in a new technology trend, and love of ReadBurner specifically, one I wish I personally could have taken on, to be honest, if only I had the budget, and the technical know-how. While others in this space may potentially question Mashable's bias here, I'm not all that concerned, and we will have to watch and see their future coverage to see if they display transparency and objectivity.

Of course... I'm always willing to break stories here if folks are worried... What do you think? Was a line crossed, and have Mashable's comments assured you that everything will be on the up and up?

New RSSMeme Widget Embeds Blogs' Shared Item Statistics

Not to be overlooked on the day of ReadBurner's return to the Web, RSSMeme creator Benjamin Golub introduced a new widget for blog owners who would like to display how often their posts have been shared via Google Reader. The new functionality is powered by Golub's RSSMeme service which, like ReadBurner, shows the most popular items shared, but also offers advanced functionality that ReadBurner does not, including enabling blog owners to track their own feed popularity and shows popular tags for shared items.

For blog owners, displaying interactive details on blog posts is nothing new - ranging from FeedBurner's FeedFlare option to Technorati's tabulating external links. But RSSMeme is the first I've seen that harnesses the power of Google Reader to show just what RSS readers have found most valuable.

While RSSMeme is the first to fill this gap, using it here was a no-brainer. When Golub first wrote me about the possibility of developing the new widget back on March 5th by e-mail, I wrote back, "I'd definitely like to see that. I think it's a magic bullet."

So when it arrived today, I was ready. I took 5 minutes and added it to my Blogger interface, as you can see in the below two examples. Now, the RSSMeme data shows alongside the common Digg, Technorati and StumbleUpon details familiar around the blogosphere. And Golub's not done. While this first iteration simply pulls data from RSSMeme, future updates will enable readers to share directly from the site.


You can also see posts from louisgray.com shared on RSSMeme here.
Additional coverage of the new RSSMeme Widget can be found here:
Mashable: RSSMeme Hits Back at ReadBurner with Widgets
SheGeeks: RSSMeme Widget Released Early

You can get the code for the new widget here: http://www.rssmeme.com/widget/

As to whether I would favor a RSSMeme widget over one from ReadBurner, or vice versa, I think there's no doubt that bloggers will want to show the fullest story. Today, RSSMeme has more aggregate link blogs burned than ReadBurner did when it first shut down. This means my total number of shares will be higher on RSSMeme today. If ReadBurner can lap RSSMeme in total population, I would make the switch. It's an arms race for sure, and Golub isn't on the retreat.

ReadBurner to Return With New Ownership

Alexander Marktl's debut of ReadBurner in January had rapidly propelled him and his service to a short-list of new Web tech All-Stars. In days, the Google Reader shared items tracker rocketed to popularity, gaining praise from all corners of the Web, many of whom, including me, had long begged for a universal directory of shared links and most popular items - seeing the ranking of such shared items as a democratized, transparent, version of TechMeme.

But, like fellow All-Stars Barry Sanders and Michael Jordan in their respective sports, Alexander prematurely retired, and left us wanting more - in this case, saying real life had gotten in the way. But as with Jordan, this early retirement has not been the true end - setting the stage for a dramatic re-entrance, this time, with a little help from some powerful friends, including Adam Ostrow of Mashable, Drew Olanoff, and Eric Kerr. (See: I’ve Acquired ReadBurner: Attention Data is the Future of Social News

As of this morning, ReadBurner is no longer a gaping hole in the Web 2.0 sphere, but has returned with a splash page promising big things. The plan is to relaunch the site in a couple weeks with a more scalable back-end, improved design, and even more features requested by ReadBurner's demanding fan base - myself included.

And this development is tremendous. Many ReadBurner fans were up in arms over seeing one of the best sites to debut in 2008 get shuttered. Steven Hodson of WinExtra wrote, "ReadBurner - Please reconsider", and ReadWriteWeb simply lamented, "ReadBurner is Gone". The loss of ReadBurner left us with RSSMeme, a strong alternative on the Web, and Feedheads, ReadBurner's Facebook counterpart, and the original innovator in this space.

ReadBurner hasn't just found new friends. In fact, the site's found a new owner. Adam Ostrow isn't just bringing the site back. He bought it, for an undisclosed sum, from Alexander, in partnership with Drew and Eric. Now, the threesome, with Alexander acting as an advisor, will move forward and help ReadBurner achieve the amazing potential it always promised.

The excitement I had when I first uncovered ReadBurner and exposed the fledgeling site to the world is back.

When I found ReadBurner, after midnight on January 7th, I knew this little site had the power to change how we share and discover new sites and gauge momentum. In days it had its share of copycat sites (including RSSMeme on February 6th), and had gained media buzz from Mashable, LifeHacker, WebWare, the Download Squad and many others. It was fun to see Alexander's project grow to a full-fledged service, one too big and too successful to be held down by my little blog. Now, I feel like I've seen the baby grow up... and it's ready to set out on its own.

Welcome back, ReadBurner.

How I Found or Started Using A Dozen Web Services

I was talking with a friend the other day about one of the Web services I use on a daily basis. When they asked about how I first learned of the site, I couldn't really remember. Did I get invited? Did I just log in? Did a friend tell me about it? No idea.

So, I thought I'd take a look backward and share how I found out about some things, or what the driving reason was to join others... and maybe you can tell me any interesting stories you have along the same lines.

(Presented in no particular order...)

1) MySpace (www.myspace.com)

I don't use MySpace, per se. I certainly don't have a MySpace page. But in 2005, when I was hosting the Oakland A's themed ANtics here (instead of on PhotoBucket), I saw a lot of traffic from random MySpace pages. Enough folks thought highly enough of the comics to post them in comments or their profile, so I got a dummy login and can now click through to see what people are saying about them. And this... I promise you... is the only way I ever use MySpace.