Online Media Cultist

Recently, I’ve been trending toward using Techmeme, a content aggregator and “meme tracker,” and Twitter, a communications aggregator and “people knowledge tracker” of sorts, as a way to bring news and information that’s relevant and valuable to me. Fred Wilson of A VC seems to be of a similar mind but theorizes that the “average audience member” may still be more focused on single content publications rather than these kinds of platforms.

In other words, it’s a question of content aggregation versus visiting a single publication as a place to consume news and information.

As evidence, Fred uses a Compete chart that shows a spike in TechCrunch’s traffic while Techmeme’s growth has been relatively more modest:

Wilson goes on to state:

I have moved away from reading individual blogs. I want to read aggregation services like techmeme, hacker news, reddit, twitter, delicious popular, digg, etc, etc. I find that they give me a much better view of the top stories of the day than reading individual blogs does.

But once again, what I do doesn’t map very well to what the average audience member does. I think I need to remind myself of that fact on a daily basis.

I agree with Fred, but I might take a slightly different conclusion. I personally find following the massive volume of posts that TechCrunch and Mashable publish to be difficult. Further, the stream of product announcements, rumors, and tech business news can be exhausting to sift through.

I wonder if the massive growth of Twitter and relative popularity of sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon tell us that people are looking for a combination of algorithm-based and influence-tracking sites (Techmeme) and community-powered content aggregation (Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg) as a way to:

* Relay the most important/compelling/interesting/breaking stories in close to real time - Traditional media websites aren’t efficient at telling us what’s going on in technology and the Internet in real time. Blogs and community-powered sites are clearly filling that gap. And I would argue that “intelligent communities” like Twitter are the next step in this evolution.

* Provide analysis/commentary/meaning/value to news - Again, the blogosphere emerged as a means to fulfill a desire to bring credible opinions and commentary to the news of the day within the online medium. Because blogs are now such an essential part of distributing the news itself – and TechCrunch and Mashable are critical pieces in this – content aggregators and content-centric communities (as opposed to social networking communities such as MySpace) are becoming ever more important in aggregating stories, getting them to the right place at the right time, and relaying what communities are saying about them and think about them.

This is all to say that smart content aggregation and community-based content sharing will become an ever more important part of information consumption. I believe that that’s part of the reason why Twitter is seeing amazing growth (as well as more funding, maybe they’ll tack on a business model one of these days!) and why a range of sites, including Techmeme, are popular within the tech-obsessed crowd.

In other other words: maybe Fred Wilson’s “average audience members” aren’t quite there yet, but I bet they will be in time.

And if you’re looking for one ring to rule them all… it just might be Friendfeed, a service that aggregates Twitter conversations, blog posts, Google Reader shared stories, comments made via Disqus, social news “diggs,” and a host of other services. As bhc3 writes: “FriendFeed is emerging as the one lifestream platform to rule them all. The ability to see and interact across a range of services is proving addictive. And it may inadvertently disrupt a few other services along the way.”

For a great insider’s view of how one blogger is handling his social media consumption workflow, check out Louis Gray’s piece. It’s a great step-by-step on where things are headed.

I titled this piece very deliberately in response to Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb’s Video Comments? No Thanks – 5 Reasons They Don’t Work.

Now, I’m not a maniac fan of video comments; they don’t turn me on tremendously on a personal level. Also, not that many people have webcams so they’re not going to hit massive scale anytime soon.

That said, they add a really nice wrinkle and option in the way that people can interact with a blog or website (for a bunch of examples, check out TechCrunch, which rolled out video comments through its partnership with Seesmic yesterday). Think about it: if someone’s going to take the time to turn on a webcam and say something in front of it that the whole world might have the potential to contemplate, isn’t that a pretty cool thing? And when we’re talking tech and media-related blogs, I think in the vast majority of cases people who leave video comments are going to at least try to be thoughtful and intelligent about it.

Below are the reasons that Catone feels that video comments don’t work, and my responses.

* You can’t scan them - Josh says that video comments take longer to watch than video comments take to view. But for people who don’t want to watch them, it’s effortless to skip them. Further, I’d argue that video thumbnails always give a page some visual flavor and help to break up dry-looking text. Finally, it will be rare for any site to get a huge number of video comments on any given story, so for the present they are more garnish than main dish anyway.

* Harder to moderate - As I mention above, it will be rare for any site to get a lot of video comments, so the time to watch and moderate them likely won’t be excessive. And there are always going to be spammers, flamers, and trolls on any popular site, so whether they exist in print or video they’ll need to be dealt with. And I imagine that people who flame via video will end up looking pretty hilarious in many cases!

* They’re inaccessible - I’m confused about what the point is here. Perhaps that video comments will be difficult to access for handicapped people? “In order to make video accessible, you need to add captioning — which is probably not something you’ll see on Seesmic anytime,” Catone writes.

* You can’t leave links - If a publisher wants to, it’s easy enough to attach a unique URL to every comment, thus providing a unique URL (if not embed code) for every comment on a site, including videos. I get what Catone is saying, that a wonderful thing about comments is the ability to link out to related content, but a workaround here of course is to let people leave a text description sit with their video comment, in which you can write something like: I blather on insanely about my obsession with Twitter on this video. Check out Twitter at Twitter.com, y’all! Or some such.

* They increase load time - They don’t though. A well developed video comment system will simply load a little Flash and a thumbnail image, so that it’s not that much heavier than publishing a small .gif to the page. Catone mentions that using a service like Seesmic will make the load of the video comment a third-party call, but think about how most blogs are jammed to the gills with widgets and ads. Those are all third-party calls too!

I actually think that a big time video blogging platform will emerge over the next year or two. Viddler is one of the closest plays I’ve seen in this direction, a video and social networking site that is stronger than YouTube in terms of creating a home for videobloggers to promote themselves.

Video content and video feedback from the community will become an increasingly essential part of dialogue on the web. So in my view we might as well embrace the video commenting beast.

I love Techememe. It does a pretty remarkable job of collecting the top and hottest stories going on in tech, Internet, online media, and all the business, cultural, and social issues surrounding those worlds. It uses an algorithm based on links and “influence” to find top stories and lays out those stories and the surrounding conversations in story clusters, which changes in nearly real time throughout the day.

Because of Techmeme’s popularity, it itself is often a source of news. Who is trying to game it, who is too popular, not popular enough, who is writing “bitchmemes” to get some 15 minutes of Techmeme celebrity, and so on.

Just over the weekend, TechCrunch did a study of who the top individual writers have been on Techmeme this year. Michael Arrington, Erick Schonfeld, and Duncan Riley of TechCrunch dominate, taking three of the top five slots alone. Mathew Ingram, who nailed the #9 slot himself, points out that Arrington alone towers above the rest of the field, averaging some two Techmeme headlines per day.

Not surprisingly, the reactions have been swift. Dave Winer, in a post that will no doubt provoke many in the blogosphere, writes a withering rebuke of Techememe, basically accusing founder and owner Gabe Rivera of catering to his friends. Further, he takes the opportunity to blast Rivera for not being more transparent in how Techmeme works and calls out “most” of those who nab Techmeme headlines for not knowing “the first thing about technology” because they are not software programmers.

My only thought about TechCrunch’s dominance of Techmeme is that it’s reflective of its overall popularity in the tech blogosphere. It breaks stories, it’s highly popular, and gets linked to widely by influential sites, so it make perfect sense that it will rank high on Techmeme as well. If that popularity may cause momentum of its own accord, that’s the same with any other form of popular publication or broadcast. Over time, if the quality and value isn’t there, that would surely cause less people to frequent, link to, and write about the site, which would cause the opposite effect.

I normally read Mashable, the uber-comprehensible news service of the social media world, through an RSS reader, so I was a little bit surprised when I browsed around the site last night.

Is it just me, or does it have a lot of ads?

The center column is ad-free for the most part, thankfully. But there’s a lot of color and blinking lights and ads that run on and on down both the right and left column of the page.

Far be it from me to criticize a website for trying to make money, I’m all for it! But there’s a balance between content and advertising that’s part art and part science.

I don’t think that Mashable’s use of ads is terrible, but it was enough to be distracting. Which I suppose is good from the advertiser’s perspective!

Taking a look at TechCrunch, arguably the site which Mashable most hopes to emulate in terms of popular and financial success, it’s pretty clear that there are a lot fewer ads and the layout and balance between content and ads is cleaner. There’s a wide body of content on left, with a sizeable column on the right set aside for ads and other stuff.

The appearance of the ads is less distracting on TechCrunch as well. Less bright flashy things going on, lack of Google text ads.

Hey, we all have to use Google text ads from time to time (ahem), but lets face it, they’re not the greatest thing that you can do for the overall appearance of your site.

A piece on Mapping the Web called Why I Stopped Reading TechCrunch and Mashable led me to consider my own take on the top tier, high volume blog publishers and how I’m moderating my own information-intake of late.

To put it more bluntly, I know I’m not alone in being terrified of my RSS reader at times. Oh man, I have 1,400 unread stories? Not an uncommon thought. TechCrunch and Mashable are great places to catch up on the newest product releases, start-up doings, and other inside the social media and tech beltway kinds of stories, but keeping up with them can be a nearly full-time endeavor.

I’ve been using my RSS reader more selectively of late, as a place to browse around when I have the time rather than looking at it as a mountain must be climbed everyday. My day-to-day strategy is to use Techmeme and Twitter as the places where I can quickly get caught up on what’s going on in the tech and webby world while still allowing my community to provide me with the latest news, insider gossip and tips, and all the other juicy stuff that gets an online media cultist up in the morning.

There used to be a saying that if you simply read all of the stories published to The New York Times front page everyday, you’d have a pretty solid understanding of what was going on in the world. I think that you could do worse than scanning all of the headlines on Techmeme a few times a day for understanding what’s going on in tech and online media.

Having that basic understanding, Twitter can then be a place to get the really good stuff, quickly and easily. The key is to set up your Twitter profile to follow those people who are going to deliver the good stuff, which can take some time but I have found to be rather fun.

In fact, my thinking in recent days has become somewhat radical. When I find a new blog that I really like – such as yesterday when Louis Gray wrote about Five More Blogs You Should Be Reading, But Aren’t (I was kindly included on this list, thank you Louis!) – I considered if it would be more beneficial to me to follow the Twitter profiles of the bloggers Louis wrote about rather than add their RSS feeds.

Has Twitter become the new RSS reader?

The TechCrunch 50 versus DEMO battle is raging.

What’s interesting to me this morning is the part of the story that is developing on places like Twitter and UStream.tv.

In fact, I believe it was Michael Arrington’s comment that “DEMO must die” on Twitter that kicked off the wave of coverage this morning.

As the media wave ramped up, Jason Calacanis then announced on Twitter that it was time to head over to Ustream.tv for an “emergency meeting” of the “Jason Nation.” Calacanis partners with Arrington on TechCrunch 50 so it’s not hard to imagine which side he is on.

Calacanis, with his 15,000+ Twitter followers, managed to bring more than 300 people to the impromptu live streaming event on Ustream.

I will now present some choice Calacanis quotes from the meeting, which speak for themselves:

“Entrepreneurs are being asked to pay $18,500 for 6 minutes on stage. BOOO! That’s right it’s terrible. It’s so ridiculous that DEMO is charging that much.”

“We at Jason Nation need to stand up to this abusive practice”

“TechCrunch50 does not abuse the entrepreneurs. We are entrepreneurs ourselves. Can I get an amen?”

“We will not stand for the abuse of our fellow entrepreneurs.”

“Conference payola is wrong!”

“They had 60 or 70 companies last year pay that fee. It’s criminal!”

“The power of Calacanis compels you!”

More than the Tech Crunch 50 v. DEMO battle royale, I’m fascinated by the way in which services like Twitter and Ustream are shaping communication, collaboration, and media coverage.

WebbAlert is a new online video news show that is scheduled to produce shows four days a week with a focus on hot web and tech stories. It’s hosted by Morgan Webb, who is also involved with G4’s X-Play.

Here’s today’s edition:

My overall take is that we’re seeing a high production value entry into the online video news scene. It’s news about the web for people interested in the web, produced on the web. And for that it gets the OMC official thumbs up I’d much rather watch WebbAlert than any of the broadcast television news shows (the only TV news show I watch regularly is Hardball, with a splash of Meet the Press and a healthy dose of The Daily Show in the fake news department).

While it’s probable that I can get the same information through a quick visit to Techmeme, I was genuinely impressed by WebbAlert’s presentation and ordering of web news stories. It’s the kind of thing I might throw on in the late afternoon while I’m hustling and bustling through 300-350 other tasks, and the show works just as well as an audio track running in the background, kind of wrapping up the day’s hot web stories.

As for “the commercials,” it runs a very brief mid-role video ad, which works fine as a palate cleanser. WebbAlert has been getting a nice amount of coverage since yesterday, and not all of it super positive. Deep Jive Interests and a few others muse about the possibility that WebbAlert ad partner Federated Media is influencing the wildly positive coverage seen on TechCrunch and other FM sites. While this is fair speculation given FM’s strange and short-sighted “conversational marketing” campaign, I’m doubtful that WebbAlert’s early coverage has been influenced in such a way.

TechCrunch, for its part, has written about WebbAlert two days in a row now.

Maybe the “undue influence” comes from Michael Arrington’s opinion that Morgan Webb is “fairly hot”?

(I find the term “fairly hot” fairly hilarious for some reason.)

If you’re the founder of a floundering web 2.0 company and you decide to call out TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington for “complete journalistic incompetence” for calling out your company for its flounderingness, you probably should be really really sure that your company isn’t actually floundering, let alone circling the drain of ye olde dead pool.

In this case we’re talking about TailRank and its founder Kevin Burton, both of whom got absolutely reamed on TechCrunch yesterday for failing to do much of anything to back up Burton’s earlier assertions that TailRank was healthier than ever. And off-the-charts wailing and demands for apologies and retractions usually doesn’t do a lot to help either.

Having spam and porn as your “top news” and months old or nonexistent (in the case of Technology) stories elsewhere does not a tracking “the hottest news in the blogosphere” superstar web platform make. TailRank’s plight is obvious, and Burton would have done himself a great deal of good, for what it’s worth, to acknowledge this immediately.

I was a semi-regular user of TailRank once upon a time, probably over a year ago now. The problem from the beginning was that other sites (Techmeme, Digg, Reddit) did a better job of tracking and aggregating web stories and TailRank never found the right space between them with the right set off tools to gain some buzz, audience, and market share. At some point, TailRank removed the ability for users to submit their own stories to its system, and that’s around the time I stopped visiting.

Apparently there’s been a bit of a brouhaha the last few days over allegations that sites that use Federated Media as an advertising partner were sullying their credibility in some way by taking payoffs to write “advertising content.”

Mike Arrington of Techcrunch came out swinging hard against all critics this morning, and particularly against FM CEO John Battelle for giving his publishers “a slap on the wrist.” That is, he felt that he had done no wrong and expected his advertising partner to stand up strongly for him.

If Mike is pure (or as much as that’s possible, given his business interests) in his editorial, then power to him for standing up for himself and Techcrunch. I do think he puts himself in a vulnerable position though by maintaining a fuzzy line about what his role as a publisher is. That is, he maintains he is not a journalist while running what is a major news source for all things start up and web 2.0 on the Internet.

I must be the Ebenezer Scrooge of April Fool’s Day (bah hum bug! Let me count my web visitors in miserly and cantankerous fashion, I say!), but I’m just not that into everyone trying to become The Onion in an effort to trick the masses on April 1 each year. I’ll go with yet another Office Space reference here: it’s a little bit like when boss man Lumbergh decrees that everyone can cut loose by (going ahead and) wearing a Hawaiian shirt on Hawaiian shirt day.

And it would be one thing if the hilarity could be contained within a 24-hour timeframe, but it seems that this year things had to start early. Chief jokester Mike Arrington kicked things off on March 31st with the announcement that TechCrunch had acquired F**kedCompany.com (the joke being that a media property that covers start-ups had bought one that covers failures, get it? It’s all just too delicious to breathe).

At this rate, I can smell a wave of jokes and misdirection and boldfaced lying in the Interweb airs. It may make sense to actually leave the house on a sunny California Sunday, in fact, rather than be subjected to the neurosis-inspired madness of not knowing where the lies end and the elusive truth begins.

In any event, I was (mock) surprised by an enormous Starbucks logo overlaying Twittervision this evening, still not-April Fool’s on the west coast. The joke being, I guess, that they had sold out early and huge to the coffee-dishing colossus. Twittervision is super fun, by the way, particularly if you’re a Twitter fan: check out Twitter “tweets” popping up all over a Google maps mashup.

Update: The Starbucks logo has been removed, guess it was a short term gag!