After weeks of speculation that Digg or someone else was going to buy Spanish social news site Menéame and social news hosting service coRank - it's been announced that the two will instead merge to form a new site called MeneaRank. This new venture could really shake things up. Update: In a great example of the pitfalls of cross-cultural reporting powered by little more than Twitter and Google Language Tools, it turns out that today is Feast of the Holy Innocents - apparently the Latin American and Spanish equivalent of April Fool's Day. Doh! Hopefully there's some truth to this joke, though! Thanks for the heads up in comments, kind readers.
Menéame is a very active Spanish language site that's a lot like Digg, it could be the most successful of the "Digg clones" online. CoRank is comparable to Pligg but with a more commercial feel. It relaunched in its current form in May and Josh Catone gave it a good review. The combination of these companies' efforts, data and communities is going to open a lot of interesting opportunities.
According to a post on the Menéame blog, the two sites will co-exist but will also collaborate on a wide variety of data sharing projects. One of the first will be competition for the Technorati Blog Index - a search engine that categorizes blogs by topic and then ranks them via votes and clickthroughs on Menéame and coRank. That project is said to be scheduled to launch at the end of next month.
This is a very logical coming together and one that should prove an interesting challenge to competing sites drawing only from the English-speaking world, one destination site or any single niche alone - like tech.
Comments
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Let me quote Wikipedia:
R.C. Saints - Feast of the Holy Innocents, also known as Childermas, commemorating the Massacre of the Innocents on order of King Herod the Great. In Spain and Latin American countries the festival is celebrated in a manner similar to April Fool's Day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_28
Just so you know it :o)
Posted by: mort | December 28, 2007 10:15 AM
Be careful with what you read in the spanish web, today is Massacre of the Innocents equivalent to April Fool's Day. However it's said that there is some true on that news. We will now tomorrow :-)
Posted by: fesja | December 28, 2007 10:16 AM
You should take this with a grain of salt, since this was announced on the fool's day equivalent for Spain (and latam countries), although Rogelio has stated that some of it is true.
Posted by: pablasso | December 28, 2007 10:17 AM
ditto!
Posted by: pablasso | December 28, 2007 10:19 AM
Thanks for the comments, readers! I will try not to make that same mistake again next year. Adding it to my calendar, in fact.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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December 28, 2007 10:29 AM
Some free translation of other headlines that got into the Spanish blogosphere today:
- Microsoft bought Citibank and also Freehand
- The king of Spain with a new Podcast
- Steve Jobs and the One iPod per Child project
- The Asociation of Internet users protected their website technologically
- The SGAE (the Spanish's RIIA) is not going to charge any more taxes and will help artists and the musical industry to understand the new media
- The RAW files will expire in 2010
- Google bought Twitter and Facebook.
- A new virus for MAC OSX
Links and more collections in:
http://mangasverdes.es/2007/12/28/recuento-de-inocentadas-2007/
http://www.online.com.es/2868/humor/feliz-dia-de-los-inocentes/
http://www.maestrosdelweb.com/explorando/20071228/
Posted by: cvander | December 28, 2007 10:37 AM
I would even erase the news. It is no news. It is a joke ;-)
Posted by: Jose del Moral | December 28, 2007 10:38 AM
Lest we forget, Gmail was announced on April Fool's Day.
Not that that lends any credence to the story. But, I thought it worth a mention. ;)
Posted by: Rick Turoczy | December 28, 2007 10:39 AM
thanks for the comments
Posted by: google webmaster | December 28, 2007 2:06 PM
It's quite obvious from the very beginning that it's a joke :)
Posted by: Yakov | December 29, 2007 12:37 AM