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Ten Years Later, This Is How Techmeme Has
Avoided Click-Bait, Auto-Play Ads, And More
Sep 11, 2015 50,114 views 528 Likes 72 Comments ¨ S T
Techmeme launched on September 12, 2005 amid a flurry of blog posts from
Robert Scoble, Richard MacManus, and several others. Friends and Techmeme
team members have insisted we need to mark this anniversary, so I reluctantly
wrote the following listicle of surprising facts about Techmeme. Now that I've
finished, I am glad I wrote it. Enjoy!
1. Techmeme didn't launch with the name "Techmeme", or even its
own top level domain. Instead, it launched as tech.memeorandum, the
technology offshoot of memeorandum, an automated aggregator of news and
commentary mainly around US politics. (memeorandum launched in
January 2004 and still lives on today, but could probably use a redesign,
rebranding, and editors.) On the day memeorandum's improved automated
engine and redesign were announced, its sister site for tech news,
tech.memeorandum went live on the subdomain tech.memeorandum.com.
After tech.memeorandum quickly eclipsed memeorandum in traffic, it
became clear it deserved its own domain, and moved to Techmeme.com the
Gabe RiveraCEO at Techmeme
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Ten Years Later, This Is HowTechmeme Has Avoided Click-Bait, Auto-Play Ads, And MoreGabe Rivera
The Meat Ban: Between Guilt &Loathing?Santosh Desai
Gold Schemes Are ImpracticalAnd Unworkable. AmnestyWould Have Been Better and…Here’s WhySandip Sabharwal
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following May.
2. Techmeme's original mission statement still holds up nicely today,
allowing for a few addendums. The goals outlined here in 2005 (1.
Recognize the web as editor, 2. Rapidly uncover new sources, and 3. Relate
the conversation) endure even to this day. However, as Techmeme became
the first stop for tech news for a growing and influential segment of the tech
industry, other goals became imperative too. In particular: strive for
comprehensive coverage of the day's most significant tech stories, and post
big, breaking news story quickly.
3. Although it has almost no direct competition today, Techmeme
was reportedly beset by a legion of competitors for years. In the
months after it launched, Techmeme was considered to be an exemplar
among discovery and search services in the blogging space, a purportedly
burgeoning industry. Moreover, its fully automated implementation at the
time appeared on the surface to rely on a simple technological process (Step
1: Scan feeds … Step 2. Sort posts by inbound links.) Inevitably, an
assortment of Techmeme-like sites was soon competing for attention. While
a few sites were clearly imitators, others were, like Techmeme, iterations on
ideas bubbling up at the time.
And so we would see TechCrunch comparing Techmeme (née
tech.memeorandum) to services with names like Blogniscient, Megite, and
Chuquet. Later the phrase "Techmeme Killer" would appear fairly regularly
in headlines, most notably when Google itself introduced a would-be
"Techmeme Killer". Even after Techmeme survived Google's Techmeme-
killer, services like ePlatform and TechFuga would still elicit comparisons to
Techmeme, while TechCrunch would later say of Tweetmeme, a Techmeme-
like aggregator of tweets "If I were Gabe Rivera, I'd start worrying now".
As you can probably guess, each of the above services mentioned above
(Google Blogsearch included) no longer exists.
Today, it's rare for a new service to come along that is considered to be direct
competition for Techmeme, for a couple reasons. First, in the proceeding
years, Techmeme introduced elements like human editing and rewritten
headlines that made cloning more than just a problem of deploying code.
Second, most media entrepreneurs now see more potential through other
avenues. Unicorn valuations in media today are thought to be won through
BuzzFeed-like strategies to attain BuzzFeed-level scale, not building another
How I Went From NYC to
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industry news aggregator.
4. Techmeme has lots of indirect competition, including Twitter,
Facebook, and blogs. Like all media sites, Techmeme's real competition
comes from whatever is best at diverting attention that it might otherwise
draw. So foremost among Techmeme's "competitors" are Twitter, Facebook,
blogs that function as news aggregators, and, in fact, media of all forms (not
to mention sunshine, children, and puppies). A person who is content to
gather technology news through what friends share on Facebook, or by
scanning thousands of tweets each day, may be less likely to rely on
Techmeme. On the other hand, because this competition exists, those that do
rely on Techmeme happen to be the most demanding and informed readers,
the ones who know they can't stay current on actionable news by merely
consuming social media feeds. So while competition may curtail Techmeme's
readership somewhat, it has the effect of making our average reader more
valuable.
5. Lately we've been more about building team and process than
technology. While Techmeme's foundation is a suite of technologies that
continues to evolve, the bulk of our work in recent years has been directed at
hiring and training editors, and perfecting the processes that strengthen our
editorial product. In this way, we have more in common with news
organizations than, say, Google News or Nuzzel. While it's possible the
balance may shift again in the years ahead, our reliance on human editors
will not wane (until such time as AI has progressed to the point where robots
write hit songs and screenplays.)
6. Techmeme usually has only one editor working at a time. In 2008
we announced we were coupling our algorithmic engine with our first human
editor. Since then, we've hired several more editors to provide near-24/7
coverage. Even with those additional editors, we still follow a model in which
usually just one editor works on Techmeme at a time. Mediagazer,
Techmeme's sister site for media news, employs editors as well, but again,
mainly just one at a time. While there are moments throughout the day when
a second Techmeme editor assists the first, facilitated by an editing system
designed for collaboration, more often than not, it's just one human editor
alongside our automation.
7. Our editing model leads to a highly distributed and international
team, and no offices. Covering news 24/7, but with only one editor
working a site at a time leads to an organization built around working from
home, so long as those home offices span many time zones. The flexibility
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that comes with working from home has enabled us to tap talent pools
unavailable to other kinds of organizations, particularly stay-at-home parents
and full time college students. One result of this is a fairly broad range of ages
among our editors, a form of diversity emphasized not very frequently in
commentary on inclusion in Techmeme stories, but nonetheless a real asset
for many organizations.
8. Opting not to host articles profoundly affects the way news can be
conveyed for nonobvious reasons. Because Techmeme doesn't host its
own stories, we're never tempted to publish more articles than our readers
want just to goose traffic. Also, when we do publish new links, we're never
tempted to use headlines designed to force you to click to collect very basic
details, which would only make our homepage less valuable, and wouldn't
improve our stats in any way. The end result is a homepage that's highly
informative, scannable, and devoid of gimmicky news, an outcome that runs
counter to major trends in media.
9. Techmeme has never run interstitials, page takeovers, mouseover
ads, autoplaying anything, or even banners. Arriving at a sustainable
ad model for Techmeme was never going to be easy. When you don't host
articles, you don't rack up as many page views, and moreover, you don't have
very sharable content, the kind that attracts monthly unique visitors (i.e.
entices bored people to leave Facebook for a few seconds). In 2015,
supporting an online news operation with advertising when your page view
and unique visitor numbers aren't massive is always an uphill battle. Media
sites in this predicament are often tempted to run ads units that pay more
but repel and infuriate readers.
Fortunately what Techmeme does have is the attention of the people who
lead the tech industry. (Ask your CEO "where do you get your tech news?")
When a news destination is a hub for industry decision-makers, companies
will want to reach its readers, making it possible to sell the far more welcome
form of "ads" that Techmeme does include. These include posts from
sponsors' blogs, catchy taglines from companies that want you to check out
their job openings, and events that companies want you to consider
attending. While not all companies are used to making these sorts of
marketing buys, many are learning how, and Techmeme is here to serve
them.
10. Techmeme has never taken VC: a lesson for some, but a model for
none. I always hoped it would be possible to build and sustain Techmeme
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Written byGabe Rivera
¨ S T 72 comments
without the aid of venture capital or debt. Not so much because of real or
perceived issues around independence or autonomy, not because
"bootstrapped" is an impressive badge of honor, and not because I disliked
investors (some of my best friends are VCs!) But rather because the media
business we envisioned by its nature was just not destined to become the
"unicorn" VCs always want, at least in its first of several possible iterations.
So proving sustainability always seemed necessarily part of the plan.
Moreover, in casual conversations with investors over the years most ideas
for expansion suggested to me seemed destined to fail in my estimation (a
fate borne out in a few cases by actual companies that carried out such
plans).
As Techmeme never did raise VC nor even attempted to, my initial hope of
course became a reality.
And yet I don't want Techmeme to be any kind of flag-bearer for
bootstrapped startups, because the lessons we learned are not so widely
applicable, especially in 2015. While there are lessons to learn from what
we've built, it's hard to imagine a business starting today for which
Techmeme's experience can serve as a direct model. Furthermore, I wouldn't
even claim with certainty that forgoing VC was the best decision for
Techmeme. Just because most ideas for rapidly expanding Techmeme are
flawed doesn't mean all of them are, and as we've found after some
consideration, there may be some good ones out there!
Featured In Technology, Writing and Editing, Editor's Picks, Social Media, Media
Advertising Sales, Venture Capital, Blogging
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Ivan WidjayaFounder at Noobpreneur.com
Quite an inspiration, Gabe!
I run a business blog among some others - but at a miniscule level
R
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The Meat Ban: Between Guilt & Loathing?Sep 14, 2015 92,170 views 281 Likes 123 Comments ¨ S T
As someone who grew up in a vegetarian household, and took to eating meat only
as a teenager, the idea of making do with vegetarian food for a few days does not
fill me with horror. We were not staunch vegetarians, in that we could cook eggs
once in a while- my mother would not participate, but the kitchen was made
available to us, and forays into non-vegetarianism were not considered mortal
sins. Even so, at heart one remains a vegetarian, and consequently can neither eat
seafood, nor anything even mildly adventurous in terms of meat (that includes
lamb), on account of the ‘non-veg’ smell.
The idea of killing animals for the purpose of pleasure (for one doesn’t absolutely
have to eat meat for sustenance) is admittedly a source of some moral discomfort
compared to yours - but you are right: I need to start breaking news or other
newsworthy updates, and become a source/on the offense, rather than talk
about day-old trendy business topics/on the defense.
Hiring editors - I should be doing that, considering my poor editorial skills.
Like Reply 1 hour ago
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Santosh DesaiMD & CEO at Futurebrands
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and one deals with it by not thinking about it. However on occasions when the
awareness of that reality cannot be artfully sidestepped, like for instance when
one passes a tempo crammed with terrified chickens, screaming their heads off
with every evolutionary instinct at their command at the fate that is to befall
them, it is difficult not to wrestle with the question about the legitimacy of eating
meat. There is something about animals that know that they that they are about
to die, that particular note in the bleat, that speaks of the preciousness of their
own lives to them, and which is matter-of-factly ignored by us, when we dig into
their remains.
It is a complex question, without any absolute answers. Humans have hunted
and eaten animals since the beginning of time, so there is little historical basis for
thinking of vegetarianism as an absolute moral imperative. Even hunting as a
sport, has many champions, although the idea of killing defenseless creatures
merely to prove the superiority of one’s equipment, should perhaps be one that is
easier to be repulsed by. Even here, there are many who oppose hunting, but see
nothing wrong with fishing, although, how exactly is it different is something that
is not entirely clear. The Maharashtra government seems to agree – for it is able
to argue that we don’t kill fish, we merely take them out of water. They then
proceed to die. The trouble is, fish die with an obviousness that is difficult to
misinterpret. They writhe about, they leap around in agony, they flip before
finally flopping in death. But culturally, fishing is deemed legitimate- a relaxing
sport, one that one can take a young child to.
There are many such disparities- wearing fur is a modern sin, but farming
imprisoned cattle industrially for meat is just business. And why does the slaying
of a lion Cedric, cause more grief than any other endangered creature? Why do we
care more about saving the tiger rather than say, the Griet bush frog, a species
that is critically endangered? Why can we celebrate the eating of all kinds of
exotic animals, but find the idea of eating dogs barbaric?
Respect for life gets viewed through a cultural filter, and the hierarchy of human
preferences has more to do with what cultures choose to privilege from time to
time. It is always possible to find ways to justify what we need, sometimes by
constructing arguments that are designed to win and at other times, by simply
ignoring inconvenient truths. In this case, who gets to live and who doesn’t,
whose departure is mourned, and whose is systematically planned, what gets
eaten and what doesn’t- all these questions get culturally convenient answers.
The current debates around meat bans have also similarly little to do with the
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respect for life and everything to do with issues of culture and power. Token
support for a community, the implicit separation of the meat-eating ‘them’ and
the vegetarian ‘us’, ignoring the fact that this an obviously flawed definition, the
idea of maintaining purity in the face of cultural contaminants, these are all
markers of cultural identity rather than universal humanity.
To be vegetarian, not merely because one was born one, or because of some new
fangled health movement aimed at reaffirming one’s firm belief in one’s own
specialness, but because of a belief in the sanctity of living beings is an act of
humanity. Not wishing to harm others is in effect not putting one’s life above that
of any other living creature, to the extent possible. One could argue that is a
misguided ideal, for there is no way that human beings can ensure that they do
not cause harm to another living organism; indeed, all food sources are some
form of life, but even if that is so, there are moral and ethical issues involved that
could legitimately be contemplated at the level of the individual.
The problem today is that the vegetarianism that is on display, is not cast in
ideals of humanity that shape the thought of the very community that it purports
to support. It is an aggressive intervention, that takes a refined moral ideal and
converts into a blunt device to mark boundaries between people. It is rooted in
loathing for the ‘other’ that is seen as an impure defiler. It legitimizes a
particularly virulent form of self-righteousness, and represents a weaponised
form of discrimination. Invoking purity in effect argues that meat-eating pollutes
the cultural environment for the vegetarians. The ideal world for the vegetarian is
by implication, one that does not contain non-vegetarians.
To make food a cultural fault line is dangerous, given its essential nature. To
disallow a certain kind of food in the name of sentiment has unlike the case of
other freedoms like the right to expression, no other intention but to draw
boundaries. To use vegetarianism as a sign of disdain is to distort everything that
it stands for and turn what is potentially a complex moral dilemma into a lazy
political gambit.
(This piece has appeared in the Times of India)
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