13 months ago Read/WriteWeb published a review post about the leading "meme trackers" - i.e. sites that cluster and filter the latest tech news. My conclusion at that time was that Techmeme came out on top, closely followed by Tailrank and Topix.net. My summary back then:
"All in all, Memeorandum still comes out trumps in terms of clustering layout, speed and relevancy. Topix.net and TailRank are strong services too. Also I suspect Chuquet and Megite will pick up the pace once they've enhanced their interfaces. A very interesting space to watch!"
Later in 2006 I also compared TailRank to Techmeme. But it's over a year since the original analysis and so time for an update. I have to admit that personally I've stuck with TechMeme, although I check out the others every now and then too. To do a proper update would take me at least a few hours of research. Luckily Stan Schroeder over at franticindustries has saved me the trouble, by publishing an in-depth overview of the Memetracker market, circa 2007. Stan covers 8 memetrackers: Blogniscient, Buzzfeed, Chuquet, Daily Rotation, Feedable, Megite, Tailrank, Techmeme.
Stan's conclusion is that Techmeme, Tailrank and Megite are the leading three memetrackers, because "they have more features, index more sites, and bring the news faster than the rest.". He also noted that Daily Rotation (a customizable news aggregator) and Buzzfeed (adds its own editorial commentary) "are a bit different than others".
Stan did a little test at the end of his article, which pretty much shows the current state of the memetrackers:
"While I was writing this article, a very important news item broke: Viacom’s lawsuit against Google. I was following the technology sections of all 8 memetrackers. Techmeme picked up the news first, soon to be followed by Megite and Tailrank. Daily Rotation and Feedable followed soon, while Chuquet was yet a bit more slower, and Blogniscient hasn’t picked up this news item even several hours after it broke out."
My experience has also been that Techmeme is usually the fastest, although
I've taken to referring to the top stories on there as "Techmeme
scrums" - because when a top story breaks, there is a massive 'me too' pile
on from tech blogs. It's the same on TailRank and Megite - and this trend is
getting a little tiresome. Why? Because the business type stories (like the
current Cisco-Webex one dominating the news) tend to obscure the real
web tech stories too much... but that's just me.
This is why I supplement my Techmeme diet with the likes of Topix.net Tech (not profiled by Stan) and my personal RSS filter feeds, which give me more variety and largely keep the 'me too' news blogs out of my results. Also I get a great daily fix of headlines from OriginalSignal, which has a good variety of pages now.
What do you think of the memetrackers and which is your favorite?
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What's a "memetracker"?
Posted by: Gabe | March 15, 2007 5:14 PM
You should be pleased that's the phrase Gabe... better than "news tracker", given your site's name ;-)
Posted by: Richard MacManus | March 15, 2007 5:42 PM
What's a "news tracker"?
Posted by: Gabe | March 15, 2007 6:04 PM
TechMeme is the only one I visit on a daily basis, and subscribe to the RSS feeds. Megite seems to take the same stories as TechMeme and try to go more granular, i.e. "What are people saying about TechCrunch right now?", but the layout is much more difficult to read. Sophmoric even. (Watch I get banned from there forever now)
Tailrank doesn't even hit my radar. Gabe's just done a great job with TechMeme, Memeorandum and Ballbug. I check all three.
Posted by: Louis Gray | March 15, 2007 6:45 PM
I always liked Megite. I think if they can make some slight improvements on presentation and organisation they could make a good run at the number one spot.
Posted by: Adrian Keys | March 15, 2007 7:13 PM
Adrian, Louis and Richard, thanks for your comments on Megite and we have been doing our best to improve it. So your comments are very available to us.
Posted by: Matthew Chen | March 15, 2007 8:18 PM
Gabe's definitely got the best technology, followed by Matthew. I tend to find their results the most relevant and well organized... Techmeme also has the most compact design, which makes it easier to read.
Now if only they'd both offer automated personalization tools like Tailrank. ;)
My dream is a Techmeme that offers Feedrinse-style filtering, and the ability to upload an OPML file/add a custom list of blogs--but instead of searching for memes only between those blogs, it searches for memes they contribute to across the entire database. That way people could track 15 blogs and still get something out of it... maybe even allow people to add/subtract weight to blogs.
Posted by: Josh | March 15, 2007 8:30 PM
I have to say that the 'minimalism' of Techmeme's layout is appealing - although I think that's due to Gabe's lack of graphic design skills ;-)
Does anyone else use Topix? I think it's more mainstream than the others, but I always find good stories there.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | March 15, 2007 8:30 PM
I've found Topix stories tend to get stale -- that is, stories stay highlighted for too long, and old stories get bumped up pretty often. But their site is very attractive, and I like the social features they've added. I certainly utilize their service fairly often, but I visit Techmeme and Memeorandum (especially the river pages) multiple times per day. :)
Posted by: Josh | March 15, 2007 8:43 PM
Yep, that's a fair comment about Topix Josh.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | March 15, 2007 9:53 PM
Agree with Josh #7. Techmeme still the best but is getting cluttered by the "scrums" (perfect word, Richard) being too prevalent and too homegeneous. It was the perfect way to start, but now we need the ability to weed out the me too blog posts, add in some fresh voices and topics, and personalize the memes.
Posted by: gzino | March 16, 2007 6:48 AM
For all my criticism of TechMeme, I still use it everyday, and I supplement it with Megite and Tailrank. Megite has improved by leaps and bounds over the past year. In addition, I use Popurls.com and Originalsignal.com to round out my daily intake.
In a very real sense, these services have permitted me to cut down on the number of sites I follow directly via visiting or subscribing by the hundreds.
Posted by: Karl | March 16, 2007 8:22 AM