In late 2005 former Intel developer Gabe Rivera launched what is now TechMeme, a powerful semi-automated “meme tracker” that discovers the hottest conversations in the tech blogosphere every 5 minutes. It’s an incredible resource and has become a financial success for Rivera as well.

Earlier this month I interviewed Techmeme’s first hired human editor, Megan McCarthy, over on ReadWriteWeb. I think McCarthy’s job is a fascinating one and a good indicator of some future trends on the internet. For whatever reason the interview didn’t get as much traction as I hoped it would upon first publication, so I’ve decided to republish it here to make sure readers of Marshallk.com get a chance to see it as well.

One of the issues we didn’t discuss in the interview was the intersection of gender and technology. That’s one I try to think about a lot though, and if it’s of interest to you too then I’d suggest you check out this two year old article I wrote about women on Techmeme and the new ReadWriteWeb Custom Search Engine of Tech Blogs Written by Women.

And now our interview reprinted…

Techmeme is a semi-automated site that tracks the hottest conversations among tech blogs each day, with updates every five minutes. It’s one of the most innovative efforts in news gathering today. In December, Techmeme hired its first human editor, freelance writer Megan McCarthy.

McCarthy tends the gears of Techmeme, makes sure the content on the site remains of high quality and helps ensure the inclusion of new and important voices. It sounds like an awesome job and one that has probably never existed before – a half woman, half robot, news gathering machine. How can you get your blog on Techmeme? What’s in the future for the site? We asked Megan in the following interview.
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I am proud to have been selected as one of 3 judges for the next Web 2.0 Expo Launchpad contest. Matt Marshall of Venturebeat, someone from Microsoft and myself will make Kings for At Least A Day of the crew of one lucky startup. Whether you get in to the Launchpad or not, the Web 2.0 events are a great thing to attend, a terrific place to meet people in the industry.

The new version of NetNewsWire, Newsgator’s desktop feedreader for the Mac, is fantastic.  I’m not just saying that because I was honored to be quoted in their press release – it’s really a joy to use.  I haven’t been able to test out GoogleReader offline via Google Gears yet, but this new NNW is so nice that I’m struggling to find the motivation to do so.  That’s awful – I will do so soon and will let you know how it goes.  Perhaps I’ll do that when I take some special time to clean up my OPML files – something I’m sure we could all benefit from taking the time to do!

Speaking of OPML files, or collections of RSS feeds if you’re unfamiliar, if you’re a Firefox user you should check out BlogRovr.  I don’t use Firefox (I prefer Safari) but it’s plug-ins like this that make me doubt my decision.  BlogRover lets you upload your personal OPML file of feeds you read, along with a selection of topical feeds they offer that you can chose between and then every time you load a web page, they check to see if your favorite sources have linked to said page.  The viewing options are really nice too, but the concept – wow!  Talk about bringing it all together – yes, please – automate a quiet notification if any of my favorite sources have also written about whatever I’m reading.  Love it!

Finally, speaking of recursive online art – are you familiar with the film Four Eyed Monsters?  It’s not to be missed!  Two artists in New York date for like 6 months without speaking to each other directly, just through art.  Then they make a movie about their falling in love, video blog the heck out of it and get thousands of friends on MySpace.  Feature film debut on Valentine’s Day in theatres across the country, any city with sufficient requests via their website.  I saw it in Portland, loved it.  

The news?  Now the full feature length film is up on YouTube and movie social networking site Spout is running a cost-per-action style sponsorship.  For every person who creates an account on their site, via the FourEyedMonsters promotion, the company is giving the FEM crew $1.  I don’t know if it will work, and I hope there was a base level of sponsorship as part of the deal – but hey, this is cool news.  I urge you to create a Spout account and support these awesome indy artists leveraging online social media!   I learned about this news on the up and coming blog 901am.  I’m going to blog about it over on SplashCast this afternoon and embed the full video blog series along with the full length film.  Yay!

If you’re in Portland, I apologize for not mentioning this earlier – but I’m speaking/leading a discussion tonight at a session of the Portland Web Innovators group. Topic: “Commoditization of web applications and the reemergence of content as king.” It should be fun.

Waking up this morning, I can’t help but think about how the imminent acquisition of Last.fm by CBS is just the next in a series of deals that financially validate the online social recommendation concept.  (StartupSquad has some of the best news coverage of the deal. Last.fm blog post and comments worth a read as well.)  I am very excited about the rumored acquisition of StumbleUpon by eBay as well.

“Users who liked what you’ve cumulatively told me you like, also tend to like these other things.”  It’s a beautiful concept – I mean that I’ve been struck by the beauty of this concept across a number of sites for weeks.  Everyone knows that’s a big part of Amazon.com but it’s also what makes StumbleUpon what it is, too.  My favorite lately has been Pandora.

Recently I’ve heard people say things like “I worked on my Pandora ’stations’ for months and I’m finally getting a really solid stream of music that I really, truly like.”  That kind of learning by a web service, starting from a point I designate and refining the trajectory based on thumbs up and thumbs down on subsequent movements, strikes me as fundamentally beautiful – especially when it’s music we’re talking about.  I far prefer Pandora’s interface over Last.fm’s, by the way.

The roll of cumulative recommendation versus other core systems of analysis at Last.fm or Pandora isn’t completely clear – but there seem to be two defining traits to both these sites and StumbleUpon:  The interface can be related to very simply (though more complex use is also an option.)  I get access to the fruits of my labor very quickly.

I used to use Furl.net for my social bookmarking – I miss it terribly, in fact.  Furl would look at my bookmarks and suggest not just other URLs, which were less interesting, but it would recommend other users with similar interests.  I could look at each of these and decide whether or not to subscribe to their bookmarks by email or RSS.  Back in the day I chose email; I still get those emails and the signal to noise ratio is stunning, it’s like a stream of pure gold.

It looks like MeFeedia offers something similar to this for video feed recommendations.  The fact that del.icio.us does not offer recommendations seems a huge lost opportunity to me, almost a crime of neglect against my data.  You know that companies that collect loads of my data are going to mine it for their benefit – I want to be able to do the same thing, at least on the simple level of getting recommendations relative to other users.

This post isn’t terribly coherent or carefully crafted as much as it is a series of thoughts on the subject, but no series of thoughts here would be complete without the following.  Service providers, give me access to my own damn data.  I do the work using your tools, you hold the resulting data, you monetize that data for as long as I’m happy with you, I benefit from the act of data creation and secondary impacts like better recommendations over time.  Then I find someone I like better than you and I’m out of here.  Do you get to keep my data?  Not exclusively, no!  Keep it in aggregate if you’d like – but for goodness sake, if you think that holding my data hostage and threatening me with data poverty if I leave you is a way to keep me from leaving your service – well that’s just a totally dysfunctional way to maintain a relationship.

Now I’m angry, thinking and writing about user control over our own data.  VERY few companies are hip enough to this, I don’t think any of the above discussed companies are.  Why should they be until their users insist on control over our own data?

None the less, the CBS acquisition of Last.fm is a big validation of the social recommendation concept.  I’m very excited about it and though I’ve got some big concerns, I am interested to see what a giant media company will do with it.

If you believe the reports that MySpace (Fox Interactive Media) is acquiring Photobucket (apparently first written about at Valleywag, to whom congrats are thus due. Now TechCrunch says it’s confirmed) there’s a couple take aways that come to my mind. (This wouldn’t be the first time Valleywag wasn’t quite right on timing, but really – it’s not a bad source.)

The primary takeaway is that the recent peace found between MySpace and Photobucket was obviously not a sign that MySpace is any more open than before to third party services thriving in their ecosystem.  They just bought the biggest one, bringing it in house.  You have to wonder whether Photobucket’s valuation was hosed minus MySpace anyway, I suppose. They were presumably bought for both their huge userbase and their innovative technology (see this TC story, for example.)

I often remind people that MySpace is more open to third party widgets than many other hosted social networking or blogging services.  Disabling outbound links in Flash media and freaking out if said widgets are monetized in any way, though, is a real loss.  If MySpace allowed other companies to monetize their monstrous traffic, perhaps just taking a cut, then the whole market would see far more innovation than it does today or is likely to given the people and adspace hording by MySpace.

No one company can be all things to all people and they shoot their own long term growth in the foot by failing to support the growth of ancillary services.  There has got to be a way to turn what they see now as a parasitic relationship into a symbiotic one.  They probably don’t get that though and will suffer for their hubris against the spirit of new social media.

I was excited when eBay bought StumbleUpon, but this acquisition today just seems sad to me.

Since the first Photobucket video I grabbed off the site contains an obviously copyrighted song, it also makes me wonder whether Photobucket is about to face some serious lawsuits just like YouTube does now that it’s been acquired by someone with money.