I #BlameDrewsCancer For Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

Last year, when ReadBurner was saved from an early demise, I gained more than the return of a site I enjoyed and found useful. I also gained a good peer and friend, in Drew Olanoff, who along with Adam Ostrow and a small team of developers, have been working on expanding ReadBurner, and extending its product line, including BurnURL, which we have discussed before. For whatever reason, Drew almost immediately transformed from a virtual world acquaintance who I knew through podcasts and trading e-mails, to a real-world friend, someone who I know I can call practically any time, any day.

Drew is energetic. Drew is geeky and loves it. Drew is really funny and always has me laughing. Drew is sharp and has a great eye for what works and what doesn't. Drew has a sense of personal style that you can see in everything he touches, from his own blog, to his work at ReadBurner, and previously at Strands, or his new job at GOGII.

And Drew is selfless. He famously got a woman's Twitter account ID tattooed on his arm for charity. And he was the first to ever dare and babysit my twins when they were very small.

But in May, my conversations with Drew changed tone. Drew had found a lump in his neck and throat area, and smartly thought to go to see a doctor. His symptoms pointed to his possibly having Hodgkins Lymphoma, a form of cancer. As his tests were being reviewed, I spoke to my dad, also an MD, and asked what he thought. In his matter of fact way, he ageed, saying, "Yup. Sounds like lymphoma."

Drew got the news not too long ago, that yes, he had been diagnosed with cancer. The big C... and would have to undergo chemotherapy. In fact, his first chemotherapy session was this last Monday. We've talked in the last few weeks on the phone about how he feels, what he expects, and how this will change him. But even as the disease tries to sap his physical strength, Drew's spirit is not being dampened. He is taking on this challenge like any other, and is looking to heighten awareness and deliver change.


You Can See What People Blame On Drew's Cancer Here
Today, in a heartfelt post, he revealed his battle with cancer, and started a new movement, to "Blame Drew's Cancer" for anything you want. Simply post a note to Twitter with the hashtag #blamedrewscancer and a dedicated site at http://www.blamedrewscancer.com will show whether you blame his cancer for your losing your keys to the downfall of your favorite sports team, or the economy at large. And with time, Drew will likely announce corporate partners who are going to work with him to kick cancer in a place that hurts.

I blame Drew's cancer for going after a guy who has been nothing but good news ever since he entered our family's life. Our kids love him and so do my wife and I. That's why we're asking you to also Blame Drew's Cancer... and show the big C who is boss.

InFeeds the Latest Service to Calculate "Top Shared Items" Online

For more than two years, we've been talking about services that could democratically tabulate the most popular shared items on the Web, using Google Reader link blogs (like mine) as their data set. In early 2008, there was a practical explosion of such services, started by Feedheads, and rapidly followed on by ReadBurner, RSSMeme, Shared Reader and others. And while it's the earliest of days for a new service called InFeeds, developers continue to see this as a project worth tackling.


The service started gobbling up popular shared item blogs this morning (as you can see on Twitter), bills itself as a "shared items feed aggregator" and asks, "what's interesting in your feeds?"

Like the aforementioned competitors, InFeeds looks like it is going to show you items that have received the most shares from registered link blogs, sorting by 2 or more shares and 5 or more shares, for example.

If you look at its spartan "Upcoming" page, you can see that individual shared items are displayed with the original headline and author, who shared the item, and a number of tags, such as "Facebook", "iPhone" or "Google".


One Item I Shared Via InFeeds, Displaying Tags
With RSSmeme founder Ben Golub working at FriendFeed, and the ReadBurner site currently being down for repairs, there could be an opportunity for somebody like InFeeds to sneak in and be interesting. So while I may advise the ReadBurner team, I think it makes sense to hop over to InFeeds and provide your Google Reader shared links URL to give this developer a little push.

You can submit your URL here: http://infeeds.com/

BurnURL Clarifies Focus In Light of DiggBar Controversy

Digg's new DiggBar is gaining a great deal of negative feedback as many see the URL shortener as reducing publishers' impact on Google and other search engines, giving Digg.com the credit as the new shortened URL is discovered. The debate has been lighting up Techmeme and John Gruber of Daring Fireball has pratically turned over his entire site to link after link decrying the new product. (See also: Ted Dziuba, Danny Sullivan and 3DogMedia)

With this backdrop, ReadBurner's new URL shortner, BurnURL, which similarly to the DiggBar, frames the original articles with a "share bar", explains how they have tried to help both readers and publishers. As author Michael Davis writes:

"One of the changes we recently put live was to remove the Sharebar when we detected the user-agents of Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask (these four account for the largest portions of search traffic). These crawlers don’t need to see the Sharebar (as they’re not going to interact wtih it), so we don’t need to serve it to them. Instead we feed them a 301 redirect. This tells them the URL that was burned is the original content owner and it should be listed in the index on that topic. Our shortened URL effectively gets ignored."

While I am an advisor to the ReadBurner team, they didn't check in with me on this update (or ask me to write about it), but I'm glad to see they are keeping their eyes open and trying to create a service that benefits users and content sources.

See the full blog post here: FRAMED!: What BurnURL is doing to help out Readers AND Publishers

BurnURL Unveils ShareBar 2 With Moods, E-mail and Social Sharing

The world of URL shorteners is being hotly debated this week, and seeing tremendous change, with bit.ly making news by raising a new round of venture funding, and the release of DiggBar. In this wake, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land asks openly, "which URL shortening service should you use?". Joshua Schachter says they add a layer of indirection to an "already creaky system", and Jason Kottke adds on, saying they "suck" in general.

But as the use of Twitter explodes, so does the use of shorteners, as many are debating the number of characters they have left for tweets, or what one service gains them over another, as Twitter's built-in limitations make their use a necessity.


The New BurnURL ShareBar 2.0
Amid this backdrop, I have been closely watching the development of a URL shortener which does things differently - not requiring any software download or login, and not being married to any one social service - and working to determine the intent of the sharer, and mood of those who read the destination content. Round 2 of BurnURL, a URL shortener and share bar from the team at ReadBurner, where I am an advisor, is aimed to not only help information distributors pass links to friends on Twitter and other services, but to help information publishers gain feedback on their content.


Burning a link on the BurnURL site


Getting a "Burned" URL to share
The new BurnURL ShareBar, released this morning, is retroactive with the more than 20,000 BurnURLs that have been issued since its initial launch, and adds on some features which I believe will make it extremely competitive with some of the more well-known products out there, including:

Integrated Sharing to Many Social Services

Every BurnURL ShareBar shows a "share" button letting visitors of the page further distribute the content, to social sites including StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, Mixx, FriendFeed, Digg, Facebook and Twitter.


Sharing to Social Services via BurnURL


Sharing by E-mail via BurnURL
E-mail Sharing

From the new ShareBar, you can now e-mail the content of any Web page to any number of friends, just by clicking Share, and selecting the e-mail tab. You can send it to multiple friends, and add a custom message.

A Tweets Button that Shows Mentions of the BurnURL

By clicking Tweets in the ShareBar, you can see all mentions on Twitter of that specific BurnURL. For example, see how widely my highlighting of TechCrunch's post rumoring Google was in late stages to buy Twitter was disseminated by clicking this saved search.


The new ShareBar integrates Twitter search results for the "burned" URL
Mood Mining Ratings

Rather than a simple up or down vote, Digg or bury, like or dislike, BurnURL is looking to get the mood or emotional feedback from readers by using emoticons. Now, instead of voting a story down as "bad" because you disagree with its premise, you can tag the link as funny, interesting, boring, sad, or even exciting.

Statistics

Information distributors and publishers are also likely interested to see how far and wide their shares have gone. For example, my share of that TechCrunch article has already gained more than 400 unique impressions. The new ShareBar now shares both unique views of that link and the total number of views. And as the post on the ReadBurner blog reads, you can expect more statistics to be developed in the future.


BurnURL shows more than 400 visitors from my shared link
A former TinyURL advocate, I have been using BurnURL exclusively since its initial launch - not because of my relationship with ReadBurner, but because I like the product's flexibility and promise. Techies can argue all day about whether URL shorteners are a good idea or if there are some better than others, but I believe BurnURL is taking a different approach that is social and informative, in a world when shortening is still necessary.

You can try out BurnURL yourself by starting out at http://www.burnurl.com. If you have more questions, there is an FAQ available.

10 Ways to Maximize Your Google Reader Link Blog

I've been sharing articles I've read in Google Reader for the better part of two years. I don't know exactly when I started, but I'm fairly sure I'm nowhere near finished. And while I admittedly started sharing to a link blog without having a clear goal in mind, I'm finding that this massive shared items repository is becoming an incredibly versatile information hub that benefits me, the authors of articles I've shared, and the consumers, be they friends in Google Reader, or in many other locations.

I believe that while Google Reader has grown in visibility, arguably becoming the most popular RSS reader on the Web, the utility of shared link blogs is less known. Here are ten ways you can maximize your Google Reader link blog - most of which I'm doing, and probably didn't anticipate when I first started sharing items into the ether.

1. Act as a trusted information filter.

Regardless of how fast a reader you are, there is no possible way you can read every single news source and blog on the Web. Neither can anybody you know. And regardless of how closely your feed match percentage is on Toluu, there are feeds you read that your friends don't. By sharing the best items of what you read every day from Google Reader, you are hand-selecting the best of the Web and "endorsing" those items to your link blog subscribers.

Do so with some regularity, and you might be surprised as to how people come to rely on your manual intervention and news discovery. I first became cognizant of this in February when "SeekGround" reported "I discovered that I had shared more of louisgray's shared items than anyone else's in the last 30 days". In May, Duff's Device similarly wrote: "I saw another article that I received from Louis Gray'sGoogle Reader Shared Items again. Thanks for keeping on top of the world for me Louis. :-)"

As of tonight, ReadBurner reports I have nearly 8,500 articles shared on my Google Reader link blog. While there are others who have shared more total items, I know that I have shared those items I believe are most interesting to me, and others I believe are following along.

2. Share your items with Google Friends.

Though Google hasn't nailed the "what is a friend" issue, you can add friends through GMail and Google Talk. If they are also Google Reader users, and share items, you can opt in to seeing their Google Reader shares, and they can see yours. If they subscribe to your shared items, your shares are mixed in with all the other feeds on their list. Of course, if you don't want to see their lists, click "Hide" next to their name, or "Show" to bring them back.



3. Embed your Google Reader link blog to your own blog or Web site.

When I first started sharing to my link blog, I had this odd feeling I was sharing posts and nobody knew about it. After all, the link blog URL isn't the most intuitive on the planet. But you can embed a widget on your blog to display a subset of your recently shared items, and visitors to your blog can click out to items you've shared.

4. Add your Google Reader link blog to your Google profile

Your Google profile is a fairly blank slate, for you to add or delete as you please. While it's very common for people to add links to their Twitter page, their blog or their LinkedIn profile, I'd suggest it's just as important to add your link blog to the page. Mine is here.

5. Share items to Facebook, FriendFeed or Socialmedian.

2008 was the year of personal news aggregators, which took updates on your services from around the Web and put them all in one place. While this trends was best exemplified by FriendFeed, Facebook also offers the option to feature your Google Reader shared items, and Socialmedian will pull them in as news, going so far as to check the shares by topic to place them in the right categories.

You can see my Google Reader shares on FriendFeed here. And to avoid duplication of items, if I share items from louisgray.com, I manually delete them from FriendFeed. Takes seconds, and reduces the noise. (My Socialmedian page is here...)

6. Add your share count to ReadBurner, RSSmeme or Feedheads.

Feedheads, the pioneer in tabulating popular Google Reader share counts, was joined by ReadBurner and later RSSmeme, in early 2008. As some people are turning to ReadBurner and RSSmeme as a democratically sorted Digg or Techmeme, sharing items you like will add your vote to the list.

Be sure to add your feed to ReadBurner here.

7. Replace your bookmarks with Google Reader shared items.

At the end of the year, I said that RSS Has Practically Eliminated My Need for Browser Bookmarks. As I thought about it more, it's my Google Reader Link blog that is essentially my rolling bookmark list, highlighting those items which are the best, and which I will want to return to. While Delicious is also a good Web-based bookmarking system, the link blog is a good way to find recent items of interest.

8. Expand the visibility of lesser-known sources.

Sometimes, I get in a routine of reading my RSS feeds and then sharing, without thinking about how the shares are effecting the downstream author. But I've gotten e-mails saying the shares have generated attention beyond what I expected. Last month, one blogger wrote, "When you pop an article on (the linkblog), I'll get 60-70 hits and get pumped to the first page, that is pretty averge for the support you give me." Earlier this week I got a similar e-mail from a second author, who wrote an e-mail titled "Thanks yet again", adding "Your Google Reader share really lit up that discussion."

In a tech blogging world where there are so many different sources of news, and so many people writing about the exact same thing, you can make a difference by choosing lesser-known sources of news, and highlighting the best content, not just the loudest. I've tried to share items from those who have done original reporting or are thinking differently than the echo chamber, and it in turn can deliver greater visibility.

9. Use your linkblog as your "to comment" list.

As part of my online new year's resolution, I said I would be making more time to comment on other blogs through the year. But as you know, my full-time job doesn't work all too well with browsing the Web and making comments throughout the day. Instead, I've found I'll go back to my own Google Reader linkblog, and open the items in a new tab, and go through to add comments one by one, left to right, so I've given the authors feedback and participated.

10. Create your own leaderboard of news sources.

Google Reader tracks statistics on what your most-shared news sources are over the last 30 days, which can report on who you've found most interesting in the last month. Given each person's individual tastes, the results can be very different than more public leaderboards which tend to feature those who are most popular and have a deeper subscription base. While my own link blog does tend to feature popular sites like TechCrunch, Scobleizer and ReadWriteWeb, I can see that I've also shared a high number from lesser-known sites, including TechWag, Regular Geek, The Future Buzz, Andy DeSoto and Chuqui 3.0. And if you're stat-oriented like I am, you can check in and see how this changes over time. (See my blog leaderboard from last July)

So... are you sharing your Google Reader items? I am. You can find mine here. For the betterment of the community, it'd be great to see your shared item links in the comments.

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DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner.

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I've Taken a New Advisory Role With SocialToo

One of the most fun and rewarding byproducts of operating this blog has been to connect with entrepreneurs looking to improve their product and gain early feedback. Sometimes, I can help by doing more than just spreading the word about services I like, but get the opportunity to take time to suggest new product features, point out what I consider to be flaws, and suggest how they can better adjust to address competitors. In the majority of cases, this takes place ad hoc via e-mail or phone. In rarer cases still, I find a working relationship with an individual and the product such that we both find our cooperation mutually beneficial and have taken the next step to make it formal.

As I discussed and disclosed back In August, one of those roles was when I became an advisor to ReadBurner. Tonight, I wanted to update you and let you know I have also taken a similar role with SocialToo, which Jesse Stay, a contributor to this site, and the service's CEO, calls "your companion to the Social Web."

Since first learning of SocialToo this summer, and using it for several months, I have become very interested not just in what the product does today - primarily helping to quietly manage your Twitter account in the background, and to deliver social surveys to friends on multiple social networks, but also in a few potential directions I saw as next steps for the product.

Without Jesse's prompting, in November, I sent him a detailed outline of a new product derivative of SocialToo, which I would believe will fulfill a still-unanswered gap in the social networking space. Jesse, having significant experience coding programs for not just Twitter, but Identica and Facebook as well, seemed like the logical partner for some of my ideas. Jesse and I have since talked many times in regards to how I think his service can take the leap from obscurity to being more robust and visible, as it grows in capability and users.

As with the ReadBurner relationship, I aim to continue being transparent with you and other developers who believe they might be competitors to or partners with SocialToo in some way. And while I may be more closely tied with Jesse and the service going forward, helping to impact and review the product's roadmap, I expect to be even more critical than before, sometimes behind the scenes, and sometimes publicly, as I have with ReadBurner. I will also update my about page to reflect the relationship.

As a side note, do I expect to quit my day job and fill my LinkedIn profile with scads of advisory roles, although some of you noted the addition of SocialToo to the list over the weekend? No. But when opportunities arise to help build new companies and services that will help the Web and sound like something I want in a big way, I am more than eager to make my time available. Additionally, the relationship with SocialToo should not have any impact on Jesse's postings here. Jesse for the better part of four months has covered those topics he finds interesting, and will continue to do so. And when it makes sense that he disclose his SocialToo position, he will do so.

To learn more about SocialToo as it stands today, go to www.socialtoo.com. Jesse Stay's personal blog can be found at: www.staynalive.com.

My 2008 Tech Predictions Look Bad As Year Nears a Close

It's a year-end tradition for many media, blogs and individuals, to predict what will happen over the next year. Some prefer to make their guesses fairly straight-forward in an effort to be right (Example: Apple will release new notebooks with a faster processor at MacWorld) and others will make their guesses seemingly outlandish, so that if they're right, they're seen as virtual psychics. Others, somewhere in between. At the conclusion of 2007, I made ten predictions that I thought would be fun, and as we're coming on the one year anniversary of that post, it's a good thing you didn't bet your home mortgage on my list. (What? You say there are other issues with your mortgage? Oh.)

See: 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech

In the spirit of reducing my ego, here are how those ten predictions in the world of tech stand:

1) Google Will Trump Both TechMeme and FeedHeads

Wrong. I expected that Google would start to tabulate its shared items and most popular feeds via Google Reader, and that using this data, Google could provide a democratic version of Techmeme, or at least pull Feedheads outside of Facebook. Instead of Google doing this however, it was ReadBurner, followed by RSSMeme and others, including Feedheads, who started a site at www.feedheads.com. Later in the year, Google Blog Search did introduce the option to show hot topics in tech, but it's largely been a stale effort. At this point, Techmeme is still more important than Google in this regard, and Google Reader has declined to show most popular feeds or shared items.

(Disclosure: I am an advisor to ReadBurner and took the position in August.)

2) Facebook Will Buy Digg in an All-Stock Transaction

Wrong. I thought Facebook would use its expensive stock and buy up some smaller companies. Digg continually sounded like it was shopping itself, but it never sold, and the company's CEO often denied talks were occuring with anyone. Also, given the stock market crash, Facebook is no doubt valued much lower these days, making a stock transaction less likely.

3) eBay Will Sell StumbleUpon to Yahoo! or News Corporation

Wrong. So Far. In September, TechCrunch and others reported that eBay planned to sell StumbleUpon, but no sale has taken place yet. At this point, also, with Yahoo! crumbling, they are less likely to take on the service.

4) Twitter Will Add Video, Photography Support

Wrong. Twitter focused on growing and not crashing this year. Still just text.

5) Apple Boot Camp Will Morph to Be Like Parallels, VMWare Fusion

Wrong. I hardly hear anything about Boot Camp these days, likely because VMWare Fusion and Parallels have become entrenched, and nobody cared about Apple's "restart" alternative. My comment that Apple would "slowly take over the market" in this space also looks quite dumb, as did the expectation that Windows applications could boot alongside Mac apps. The question is, why not?

6) At Least One Major Browser Will Embed Ad-Blocking

Wrong. And it's too bad! Sure would change things a bit if somebody could figure out how to check a box and have graphical ads or text ads disappear.

7) Assetbar and FriendFeed Will Gain Early Adopter Audiences

Wrong and Right. AssetBar, in its attempt to replace Google Reader, failed fast. FriendFeed, however, did much better than I could have guessed at the time I wrote the post. Obviously, I played a small role in evangelizing FriendFeed through it coming out of beta in early 2008, but it got bigger than even I expected. My comment saying that "neither would be acquired by the end of 2008" did manage to be true.

8) Video Blogging Will Remain Unpopular, Unprofitable

Right. While there are some bloggers who prefer video and are using it, from Robert Scoble at FastCompany TV to Loic LeMeur at Seesmic, it hasn't become as second-nature as standard blogging or mciroblogging. And so far as I know, nobody is making money on this in a consistent way.

9) iTunes Video Rentals Will Decimate Netflix, Blockbuster, Hurt Box Office

Mostly Wrong. Netflix didn't blink against iTunes' charge. They instead branched out with their "watch instantly" feature and partnered up with TiVo and others. Blockbuster is still a disaster, and I certainly am not going to the box office thanks to so many alternatives. But iTunes video rentals cannot be said to have hit Netflix and others all that much.

10) Fast Company Will be a Fast Stay for Robert Scoble

Wrong, So Far. Robert joined FastCompany at the beginning of the year, and is putting up some interesting content. That said, FastCompany has seen changes in focus and leadership, and I am curious to see how his show evolves in 2009. Scoble continues to be a mainstay on the social Web and at industry events of course, so even if 2009 sees him somewhere else, it won't be far from the limelight.

So wasn't that fun? Now you see you can largely ignore my predictions, or maybe, I should try harder to be right. Maybe, if I'm good, I can put a 2009 prediction list up by the end of the year...

10 Top New Web Services of 2008 and Their 2009 Forecast

2008 has been both an exciting year and a very trying year for the world of Web innovation.

When the year kicked off, we were still in the middle of Web 2.0 fever. We were just two months removed from Microsoft having invested $240 million in Facebook at a stratospheric $15 billion. In the first week of January, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang made his first appearance at CES and promised the company was "ready and excited". By mid-month, Pownce launched to the public to offer an alternative to Twitter. And by the end of January, Twitter crashed hard - for the first time.

It turns out that Twitter's crash might have been the canary in the coal mine. Even looking at January 2008, and considering what has happened to Facebook's valuation, Jerry Yang's reign as CEO of Yahoo!, and the eventual extinguishing of Pownce in the ensuing months and it almost seems unbelievable. Of course, as you know, Twitter crashed again and again throughout the year, and in parallel, so did the fortunes of many Web companies, from the smallest startup looking to raise funds, to the monoliths, including Google and Yahoo!, who have had to rapidly make changes as the economy changes under their feet. Meanwhile, as business conditions deteriorated, the public markets were closed and valuations were decimated.

But before the doom and gloom hit, a good number of Web services pushed and shoved their way out the door in the first half of the year, and look to be here for at least the near term. Even as the second half of the year saw a drying up in new services and very little innovation, as we start to look toward 2009, there are new brands that many of us know were but a glimpse in an engineer's eye when 2007 finished and 2008 took over. And while no list is complete, here are some of the best that can claim 2008 as their birth date. I expect this will miss quite a few, so please make sure to nominate your favorites and tell me why I'm wrong!

1) Summize (Twitter Search)

Search is still king, and real-time search is having a huge impact on the way people find news, share ideas, and see trends. Summize built its business around being a search engine for Twitter, and soon became more stable, and theoretically, more useful, than Twitter itself. The Twitter team, in desperate need for more engineering help, acquired the company and absorbed into the microblogging service.

Expected Exit: Acquired - Already Complete

Twitter's acquisition of Summize was a smart move, considering how real-time search is becoming critical in times of breaking news. Many, including myself, are turning to Twitter search instead of Google, Yahoo! and the traditional news wires to hear reports from people on the ground, unfiltered.

2) Socialmedian

While many different sites have conquered the online activities aggregation space, Socialmedian went about the process in a different way than all the others, letting people not only follow friends and pipe in their shared content from a wide variety of 3rd party sites, but organized it in terms of categories. The category feature was so successful, CEO Jason Goldberg has been able to showcase specific events, including the 2008 election, and the financial crisis, and make Socialmedian a go to site to interact with "newsmakers". The site, starting from scratch in the Spring, has risen up to challenge FriendFeed, Digg and other sites for social news - and continues to grow at a rapid clip.

Expected Exit: Acquisition by First Quarter of 2009

With Goldberg and team having raised so little capital to get the product off the ground, and having kept costs very low, with the development team in India, the bootstrapped Socialmedian looks to be a ripe target for an acquisition, in my opinion. Without strong revenues and the public markets the way they are, Socialmedian would be smart to find a strong content or media partner, to join forces and enable the service to continue its growth.

3) BackType

Technorati and Google Blog Search, as well as many other directories and search engines have typically focused on the blog as the central nervous system for their offering. But as many would agree, it is the comments and conversation, no matter where they are, that have real meaning to blog authors and participants. While everyone was busy trying to see who could land on the Techmeme leaderboard or break new ceilings in Technorati Authority, BackType debuted a site that tracks comments by individual, lets you follow individual commenters across a wide variety of sites, be alerted when comments with keywords take place, and see charts that display keywords' momentum.

Expected Exit: Acquisition in Second Half of 2009

The BackType founders are working together on their second startup, having abandoned the first when it didn't gain traction. While BackType doesn't yet have an amazing market presence, they have forged a unique foothold that so far looks unchallenged. With any luck, I would expect the BackType team to deliver more enterprise-capable brand and identity management tools that would enable the service to gain revenue and exposure, letting the service to remain independent through the majority of 2009 before finding a place within WordPress, Six Apart, Google or Twitter.

4) TweetDeck

TweetDeck isn't a Web service, but this Adobe AIR application introduced new functions to Twitter usage that changed the game in terms of how people use the service. By introducing a multi-columned app that features groups, integrated search, direct messaging, and replies functionality, many are swearing by TweetDeck, and it looks like it may soon overtake Twhirl as the most popular Twitter application. Busy Twitter addicts including Guy Kawasaki swear by it.

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009

Iain Dodsworth is continuing to upgrade the product, and it's widely rumored he may soon integrate multi-account support, as well as integration with additional services, outside of Twitter. If he can get enough people to donate or pay for the application, there's no question he could make a full-time living from the resulting revenue. The question is, will people who expect a free service to have 100% uptime spring for the app that gets them there?

5) Strands

While FriendFeed, Profilactic and others were first out the gate in 2007 with their lifestreaming and social activity aggregation tools, Strands has worked on their own social news and lifestreaming site, in beta, since mid year. Focusing on delivering a clean interface for their Web, mobile and iPhone application versions, and keeping a strong emphasis on tracking musical preferences, Strands has developed a loyal following who find the site less noisy than some services and cleaner than others. Strands, instead of marketing to early adopters, like me, has given a great deal of focus to converting the more mainstream user, and acting as an evangelist for other third party applications, ranging from Pandora to Twitter.

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009.

Strands' history both bodes well and plays against them. Their VC funds offer them a strong balance sheet, but may also force the company's investors to seek a return that would be unavailable, given current market conditions. The company will need to find a better way to differentiate against FriendFeed and others, and hope that appealing to mainstream America works.

6) ReadBurner

A service that would tabulate the most frequently shared items from Google Reader was high on my list of sought-after sites in 2007. The catch is that I always thought Google would do it themselves. When ReadBurner debuted in January, it was a delight, and the simplicity of the service bred many clones, including RSSmeme. Later in 2008, its older cousin, Feedheads, broke out of the Facebook garden and entered the general Web. ReadBurner, and others like it, serve as having the potential to unseat less-democratic popular news hierarchies, such as Digg, assuming they execute well. As an advisor to the service, I'd like to say they are on the right track, or rate the service higher on this list, but development has been slow of late, and needs to get going again.

* Not Listing an Expected Exit Due to Assumed Bias *

7) Feedly

Like many other smaller services this year, especially those around the Google Reader and Twitter ecosystems, Feedly takes an existing popular product and makes it better - giving a news magazine feel to what previously had been a standard RSS reader. Feedly launched as a Firefox plugin in the middle of the year, highlighting recommended articles from friends, popular feeds, and integrating with Google Reader, so when you made changes to your Feedly, those changes tracked back to Reader.

Expected Exit: None

Feedly's founder recently noted his excitement over earning the service's first dollar, after a user Tweeted that she'd gotten distracted by an ad within Feedly and clicked through. Given most other RSS based apps haven't found any revenue yet, a single dollar is a lot more than zero, but Feedly doesn't look like it has any kind of mass that would push it to the mainstream, let alone turning into a viable business. For now, it's just an interesting twist on data consumption. The site will only go away if its developers get bored of it.

8) Gnip

With sites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious and others getting pounded all day by third party services tapping into their API and sucking down their users' updates, Gnip recognized these external sites might soon see backlash from the data sources, as too much of their own infrastructure was being used to power other programs. In light of Twitter's up and down summer, Gnip debuted to act as the middleman, essentially making data portability easier, reducing one-offs between services.

Expected Exit: Acquisiton by end of 2009

It's hard in life to be the middleman, trying to play equal with every service. Should Gnip really start to become the Akamai of data portability, it's likely that one of the biggest data producers would want to snap up the service for themselves, and either limit competitors' access to it, or start charging fees. In a world when VC money is hard to come by, Gnip would be smart to take the offer.

9) Toluu

You'll note two major themes regarding hot services in 2008: RSS and friends. Finding out what your friends were reading and sharing were key facets of most of the new products that gained my attention this year. Toluu, developed by Caleb Elston, offers a site where you can upload the OPML file of feeds you read, mark your favorites, and see how compatible you are with other users of the site, helping find new feeds, and new people. Over time, the service enabled me to see new blogs my friends were subscribing to, and you could even notify Twitter if you had added a new blog to your reading list.

Expected Exit: None

Toluu is a geeky hobby for Caleb. He's recently also gotten behind Kallow.com, a gift recommendation service. Toluu hasn't been monetized in any way, and is unlikely to develop into an acquisition target, unless another service wants to use his recommendation engine.

10) SocialToo

Twitter and Facebook have become such a part of the blogging ecosystem, that new services have sprung up to make it more useful and intuitive. Among them is fellow louisgray.com author Jesse Stay's SocialToo. The service looks to act as a bridge between multiple social networks, including Twitter, Identica and Facebook, letting you automatically follow those users who follow you, offering a black list of people you never want to follow you, setting up an automatic message to those who choose to follow your account, and recently, the addition of surveys that can be distributed by Twitter and tabulated on the site, much like SurveyMonkey and PollDaddy.

Expected Exit: Remaining Independent through end of 2009.

SocialToo contains some advertising, and if I were to guess, it may offer premium features, as the survey functionality could be improved a great deal, possibly even going head to head with sites like SurveyMonkey. While Jesse is unlikely to get rich off SocialToo, it's smart in that it's not tied just to one service (Twitter), but has the flexibility to add on new networks as they rise in prominence.

Also on the list but outside of the Top 10:
12seconds.tv, BlogRize, Identica, LinkRiver, OneSpot, PeopleBrowsr, Plurk, Rejaw, RSSmeme, Shyftr, Yokway

Duncan Riley's Inquisitr Teams Up With ReadBurner for Web's Best

Since he launched The Inquisitr just under six months ago, Duncan Riley has taken some innovative approaches to sharing news on the Web. (See: Duncan Riley's First Week at The Inquisitr Is Inspiring) Not content to simply repeat "the news of the day" and hash over the same tired subjects, Riley has added spice to the mix, covering celebrity news, and taking new approaches to finding new ways to present hot topics outside of his own site - through QMeme, which tracks popular items on FriendFeed, and Inquisitr IQ, which, in a fashion similar to AllTop, features posts from some of Duncan's favorite blogs.

Today, Duncan took another innovative step, becoming the first to harness the new ReadBurner platform by integrating the service's top stories within his site as content - not by embedding the full content on the Inquisitr, but instead, letting his readers click out and find new sources for top tech news, at their original source.


You can see ReadBurner headlines alongside The Inquisitr news
The ReadBurner partnership is part of a new, revamped, look for The Inquisitr, which now features the tagline "a better mix", hinting at the breadth of coverage available.

Clearly, in my advisory role at ReadBurner, I was aware of Duncan's plans to incorporate the service's content, but one of the most intriguing pieces of the partnership is that Duncan proactively reached out to our team rather than us asking him if he was interested in carrying the content. Duncan, looking at the options on the Web, selected ReadBurner, and presented us with an innovative way to get the best of the Web and make it portable.

You can see the new look for the Inquisitr here: http://www.inquisitr.com/

Also, the official blog post by Adam Ostrow, ReadBurner CEO is here:
Introducing the ReadBurner Platform v0.1 with The Inquisitr!

I'm both looking forward to more innovation from The Inquisitr and, of course, more developments at ReadBurner. I bet there is more to come from both sites.

DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner.

Hackr WatrCoolr: Tech News Aggregation With No Mouse Required

A couple weeks ago, in an article about Microspaces, I said that Web entrepreneurs are finding new ways for you to navigate their sites, and many are now incorporating keyboard input, to jump to new comments or pages. Though I mentioned it in a quick tweet on September 25th, I thought it was worth highlighting the Hacker WatrCoolr, a site that displays headlines from many popular tech news sites, and lets you quickly flick through them using only your keyboard - no mouse required.


A Headline from ReadBurner on WatrCoolr Tonight
WatrCoolr shows the latest headlines from Digg, Hacker News, Del.icio.us, Techmeme, Reddit, RSSmeme, Slashdot, Yahoo! News and ReadBurner. Each headline shows its recency, and the destination URL (e.g. nytimes.com or makeuseof.com).


Scoble's Post Hits Techmeme and Makes it to WatrCoolr
But unlike many other news aggregation sites, the Hacker WatrCoolr doesn't shoe-horn them into one busy page, like AllTop. Instead, it displays one headline at a time. To scroll through older items from the same source, you just need to hit the down arrow key. To see a new source, hit the right or left arrow. And to read the article, you just have to press the "r" key, or press "n" to have it open in a new window or tab.

While Hackr WatrCoolr is not looking to replace your RSS reader, some of the functionality is very similar to that of applications like Google Reader, and it's a very easy way to get all the top stories from each of these sites in one place. It may be a little experiment, but it hints at one way the Web could go to make the process of our news gathering even that much more easy. I hope to find more Web developers who are thinking different about how we navigate today's often-formulaic and static Web sites.

DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner, and hold a small equity position.

My Blog Is Less a Destination Site than a Conduit

By now, we've all likely grown used to the fact that RSS readers don't often see a blog's redesign. For those who choose not to click through and leave comments, there's little reason at all to visit a blog directly any more, considering it's possible to power through dozens or hundreds of feeds in a feed reader, be it Google Reader, BlogLines or any other. With tangential services like Disqus enabling me to even engage with readers via e-mail, instead of through the blog, there's now even less reason for me to even visit my own site.

At this point, I probably, on most days, can't even tell you my daily RSS subscriber count, visible on the blog, or see the MyBlogLog widget's most recent visitors, as I'm using my blog as a way to project content outward - to RSS readers, to aggregators, like FriendFeed, Strands and Social Median, and to connect with readers via e-mail, using Disqus. It also, via RSS, powers popular sharing sites, like ReadBurner and RSSmeme. But none of those activities, with the exception of comments, require actual visits.

While it's still important to be sure the blog itself loads quickly, for those who view it for the first time, or for those who do click through RSS and choose to leave a comment, the look and feel of the blog is less important over time. I expect fewer people are typing in the louisgray.com URL and viewing pages directly, as they accumulate feeds and read more, and see the blog's UI more as a shell for content than a destination where a reader would spend a good amount of time. At this stage, the blog is simply a point in time for the content to begin its journey.

The life of a post, as always, for me anyway, starts out in e-mail, where it's authored. Then it's copy/pasted into Blogger. Then I visit the site, quickly, and ping FeedBurner. Subsequently, I refresh the blog feed in FriendFeed to keep it up to date, and send a TinyURL copy to Twitter. At that point, I really don't have to come back. Should someone opt to comment, I can reply via e-mail in Disqus, and even Delete unwanted spam or other messages.

The bulk of the activity around the blog is pretty much happening someplace else - making the number one purpose for the blog site itself to convert new visitors into signing up for the RSS feed. So if they bump into the content, via Techmeme, Digg, StumbleUpon, ReadBurner, FriendFeed, or anywhere else, they'll sign up and take in my content in the way they choose. But my blog is not the destination. It's a point in the journey. For those who are relying on ad revenue to come through via page views, this won't be good news, but that's what I see happening. For me, as I'm not trying to convert visitors into cash, this is the new reality, and we're fine with you just signing up, passing through and being part of the conversation as you choose.

There is No Social Media Overload

Every day, there are more and more great services to investigate in the world of social media. Each one breaks new ground in terms of features, focus or user interface. There are many different sites that target general social networking, some are for business, some are for dating, some are for microblogging, and others for service aggregation. And there will be many more. While some are calling for a pause in the innovation, somewhat fatigued by the implied redundancy or overwhelmed by chasing down comments and conversations in new places, it's worth noting there's time in the day to manage a good number of sites, and not all the winners have yet been crowned.

To have a full deck of social media tools, you essentially need the following:

• 1 or more blogs that you manage.
• 1 or more accounts on an RSS feed reader.
• 1 or more microblogging identities.
• 1 or more accounts on a business networking tool.
• 1 or more accounts on a social network.
• 1 or more accounts on a service aggregator or lifestream.
  

(Also helpful: A social bookmarking site, online photo site, music recommendation service, etc.)

For me, this means I blog here, use Google Reader, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and FriendFeed as my core applications for each category. But below these headliners are others.

For RSS, I also use Shyftr and liked AssetBar before it went away. I've tried Bloglines, FeedEachOther and NewsGator as well. There are also tools that interact with RSS, like Toluu, which helps you find feeds your friends like and integrates with Google Reader, and the sites dedicated to finding the most shared items in Google Reader, like ReadBurner, RSSMeme and Feedheads. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to ReadBurner)

For microblogging, beyond Twitter, you have Identi.ca, Plurk, and now, Rejaw. I'm signed up at each, but use Twitter primarily, copying posts to Identi.ca, via Posty. I need to check out Rejaw more, but am no expert.

For business networking, there's also Plaxo, which has morphed into a lifestreaming application.

For social networking, many still use MySpace, or Friendster, but Facebook has the momentum and the development on its side. Orkut never got the traction expected.

As for lifestreaming and aggregation, I am absolutely overweighted here, and I enjoy it. Justin Korn referred to it as "Super Kickass Social Network Following Power", but if you're interested, it's fairly easy to be engaged on sites like FriendFeed, Social Median and Strands all at once, like I'm trying to do.

I like FriendFeed because it easily pulls in my activity from around the Web and has a sharp community with good conversations and hiding. I like Social Median because it lets me just see news and posts on topics I pick or from people I follow. I like Strands because it has similar elements to FriendFeed, but more filtering and some good potential. I also know it can continue to improve because it’s early. Just in the last 36 hours, I've gone from being a nothing on Strands to having more than 100 people whom I can interact with.

Below this crust of leaders, you also have smaller sites like Yokway and LetsProve, where I'm registered, but haven't done much of late. FriendBinder doesn't seem to have taken off either, and BlogRize, though interesting, got quiet fast, and seems to have gone away, as did Mergelab. The truth is that we don't know which sites are going to win, and it makes sense to be registered everywhere and active on those places where you find the best community and the best content.

Of course, just because I sign up for something, or find something, doesn't mean that you're obligated to try it out. Not all sites are for everyone. But I'm far from being overloaded with Social Media. You just have to find balance, time, and keep remembering there is no quota and you don't have to read everything. Contrary to some belief, I'm not constantly on each site. I just read quickly, decide quickly and respond quickly. None of these sites is a real big time sink, unless you force yourself to read everything. It's easier to let your friends decide the best pieces, and for you to rely on search tools to get the rest, whether it be through Twitter Search, or pre-determined Google blog searches.

The only way you get social media overload is if you don't manage it well, just like you can get RSS overload or e-mail overload, or so I've heard. Even as there are more services to engage with, the number of hours you have to work with them is still the same. So do check out as many as you think have potential, and stick with the ones that offer you the community you're looking for, the engagement you need, and the best feature set. You'll find your niche.

See Also:

• Relax, Bloggers: Nobody Is Keeping Score, and There's No Quota.
• My Social Media Consumption Workflow
• Continuous Parallel Attention: My New Reality

Transparency, Disclosure and Opening Up the Kimono

On Wednesday, I was pleased to announce my beginning a new, formal, relationship with the ReadBurner team as an advisor, where I'll be looking to help provide guidance and strategy and be more of a colleague with the already-successful team, who is looking to make the site a one-stop destination to find the most popular content online, today starting with RSS feeds, and maybe tomorrow, much, much more. Who knows?

In advance of this announcement, I reached out to a pair of folks who I perceive to be competitors of ReadBurner, and told them exactly what the plan was - that I was going to be helping ReadBurner out, and that I wasn't going to be paid, but instead, would essentially have a small potential equity stake, just like any employee, advisor or board member at a private company. ReadBurner's success, essentially, could be my success as well, should the stars be aligned.

Crossing the chasm from a completely neutral party to a biased party, or at least having the perception of bias, isn't something I'm used to. My enthusiasm for ReadBurner, as well as my enthusiasm for FriendFeed, AssetBar, Social Median, Feedly, Ballhype and other services over the last few years, has been seen here, and in each case, it has been done so without compensation, or expectation of compensation. Now that this has changed in one specific example, it of course raises questions. Will competitors of ReadBurner ever talk to me again? Will other companies try and guess where ReadBurner is headed, and trusting me less, go a different route? Maybe they will, and that's a risk that's assumed.

Only hours after my first post did I get a question like this from one developer, asking if ReadBurner should be considered competition to their work, and should they "be careful about sharing things we're working on"? Well, in all truthfulness, you should always be careful about sharing pre-release content with anyone, to start with, and second, you should always think about whether that person will have pre-conceived biases, or will be abusing your trust. And it makes sense to protect your proprietary data.

With that said, over the last few years, I have tried to be as transparent as possible, and it is important to me to be trusted. I have never written a single post on this site for pay, or in exchange for goods. I've also tried to be reachable by anyone, occasionally to my detriment. My cell phone number and personal e-mail address have been on this blog since early 2007, and even in the footer of every RSS feed. In one example where I was concerned there could be a perception of bias, I told you when I won an iPhone from Social Median and asked you to judge me to see if I unequally gave praise to the site as a result. And I expect to keep telling you if I can be found in any way to be uneven in how I view a site, person or anything else.

In 2008, especially, I've worked with developers and entrepreneurs, getting early access to sites sometimes weeks or months ahead of their roll-out, and have done so without leaking their information early, and often, worked to provide informal QA to help get their product ready for announcement, with Feedly being the best example. As I said this evening in a fun ReadBurner podcast, if I can help make the products and services we use online better, then I've done my job. I often want these products to succeed, even if I'm not their target demographic and am more than happy to keep things close to the vest, and often offer advice for free. It's what I'd been doing with ReadBurner off and on before they asked for more of my time and make it official.

But truth be told, in the online space, sites that look completely different today could look similar tomorrow. The LOUD3R family of Web sites offers many different topic-driven news aggregators, as did the Ballhype/Showhype/Beltway Blips family, each of which I covered. SocialMedian, similarly, can offer an aggregation of news on the same topics, and sites like MyBlogLog, Fav.or.it and Technorati use topics to bring similar bloggers and posts together. In theory, so could FriendFeed, ReadBurner, Feedheads or RSSmeme. And each of the last few sites could be rejiggered to take on more horizontal plays like Google News or Techmeme.

Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, on the podcast, made it clear that if he were a competitor to ReadBurner, not only would he not want to share any information with me, but he recommended to us on the call that we should be especially careful, so no entrepreneur could claim we had stolen their ideas. Allen is a smart guy whose ideas I respect, and he's right. But you shouldn't expect that overnight I'm going to start saying ReadBurner every other word and talking smack about their competitors. And I've never received anything like a confidential roadmap from anybody - so that's not an issue.

To help with clarity, I am going to add details about the ReadBurner relationship to my "About" page, and I'm going to get even more transparent so that anybody who does have questions can get those answers. There is one more small company I've been helping in an advisory role since early this Spring, and soon, they will be public, so I can talk about it, and again, be transparent. But that's in a space I don't write about, so much of the above doesn't apply.

Since starting this site, I've very visibly eschewed advertising, and haven't been making any money for what I write or where I participate. Maybe working in a consultancy or advisory role to companies like ReadBurner is where I end up "monetizing the blog", even if that isn't my sole goal for being here. As previously mentioned, I enjoy the conversations and the camaraderie, and have been doing a lot of "advising" for free for a lot of different sites. That's why I wrote "10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader" back in March of 2007, and offered "10 More Suggestions for LinkedIn" that same month, as well as 10 Suggestions for FriendFeed last December. That's why I asked What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog?. In none of those cases were my suggestions requested or compensated, and I hope to keep thinking out loud and offering advice for free.

My activity with ReadBurner, in actuality, will be very small, compared to everything else I'm doing. But if there's ever a chance where I could be seen as being biased, or needing to disclose that relationship, I will absolutely do so, and I both expect you to and want you to keep me honest - as I've tried to be so far. And if or when I screw up, call or e-mail. Transparency is the best policy.

I've Taken a New Advisory Role With ReadBurner

If you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you'll know that one of the most frequent topics I've discussed is that of RSS readers, and innovative tools to determine "hot" or most popular items - either on a broad measure, or by specific topic or vertical. One of the most fun stories to follow, for me, this year, was the stealth debut of ReadBurner, followed by its rapid ascension into visibility, its later changing hands and continued efforts to add new features and make it a standard for determining the best content across the Web.

As of today, I'll be taking a more direct role in helping the team at ReadBurner succeed, working with them in an advisory role, where I can spend a few hours each week talking strategy.

So what does this mean for the other companies in this space, who have played a crucial role in our coverage this year, such as RSSmeme, Feedheads, and LinkRiver? To me, it doesn't change a whole lot. I've made it clear that I really like this arena, and see that it has great potential, and I've maintained a good relationship with the developers at each site.

In fact, I reached out to both Mario Romero and Ben Golub in advance of this post to let them know of our making the ReadBurner affiliation more official, in case they felt I had a new conflict of interest, or would be treating them differently going forward. As I told both of them, I would absolutely love to keep being updated and spreading the word, but understand if they felt more competitive, and if any future coverage of either will need a formal disclosure of sorts.

So why ReadBurner? Because the team of Drew Olanoff, Adam Ostrow, Thomas Connors and Alexander Marktl has recognized the potential in a democratically-oriented site that can bring the day's top news to people, regardless of its source, or its topic. They are looking to springboard ReadBurner out of the hobby phase and help it grow. I'm hoping I can help, and I'm honored they extended the opportunity.

And in case you're curious, this doesn't impact my day job, which remains the same, as outlined on LinkedIn. But even if I can help the ReadBurner team in a small way, I'm excited to try. It's already been fun watching the site grow from its infancy earlier this year.

You can follow our efforts at http://www.readburner.com/. Looking forward to updating you with more, including on the ReadBurner podcast, tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Pacific. (Watch the official blog.)

Feedheads Breaks Out of Facebook to Compete In Shared Items Arena

Before ReadBurner, LinkRiver and RSSmeme arrived, there was only one game in town when it came to calculating the most popular shared items in Google Reader, and it was Feedheads. Feedheads, the popular Facebook application created by Mario Romero, harnessed the power of Google Reader to show the total number of shares each item had, displays which of your friends shared the item, and even what items were popular in a network (like "Silicon Valley", for instance).


But while ReadBurner and RSSmeme were gaining traction outside the walled garden of Facebook, and gathering a good deal of visibility from bloggers who liked their democratized view of finding "hot" stories, Feedheads remained less visible, available only on Facebook. That all changed tonight, as Romero has brought Feedheads to Feedheads.org, featuring the same functionality, but now available on the Internet at large.

As with ReadBurner and RSSmeme, the top shared sources include popular sites like comics from XKCD, Lifehacker, TechCrunch and Gizmodo.

The new Feedheads.org is spartan in terms of its look and feel, but you can view the top shared items over the last 7 days, the last 24 hours, see newly shared items, popular tags, and feeds.

Feedheads also does more than just count the feeds. It can also show who shared the item, by clicking on the number of shares, and it shows shared Google notes, something RSSmeme has held to itself thus far.

You can even log in with your Facebook credentials and see your own sharing history, at http://www.feedheads.org/me, which effectively automatically gives you your own "leaderboard" of shared items, much like I rolled out late last month, only instead of the last 30 days, it shows your cumulative history from the first time you installed Feedheads.

I've often written about the interesting space of tabulating shared items in Google Reader, and the intrigue of Feedheads, having read about it on other blogs, was a big reason I eventually joined Facebook in the first place. After starting out by showing itself in Facebook as simply "Google Reader", the service rebranded as Feedheads in October, and rapidly grew to a user base of more than 10,000 by December of last year. Unfortunately, more recent statistics are unavailable, but breaking out of Facebook is a big step in the right direction for Mario.

The success of both ReadBurner and RSSmeme has shown there's room enough for more than one player in this space, especially as each site has differentiated itself through a series of innovations. Feedheads.org was the original player in this space, and Mario led the way in trying to make order where there was none before. Now, out of the walled garden, it should be interesting to see what innovations he has planned next.

Techmeme and TechCrunch's Detractors Prove It's Hard to be On Top

One downside of being in a visible leadership position is that you often have a bulls-eye on your back. Sometimes it's from your competition. Sometimes it's from people who feel what you offer isn't benefitting themselves personally, and other times, it can arguably be your biggest fans, who want to change what it is you do to serve their whim of the day. In the tech blogosphere, there is no single blog more influential and visible than TechCrunch, and there is no single aggregator or news site more influential and visible than Techmeme. That the two's fortunes are at times seen as being closely linked only helps to fuel the flames of frustration by those eager to see change, be it through finding alternative sources for news, or, instead, asking for either site to change its tone, its breadth of coverage, or its methodology.

From a third party point of view, it seems the day in and day out potshots against both Techmeme and TechCrunch have taken their toll on the most visible representatives of each site. Techmeme's Gabe Rivera is well-known for his sarcastic, evasive, answers when his site's reputation is questioned, and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is often described as short-fused and sleep deprived. Recently rumors have circulated saying Arrington wants out of the blogging business, and is looking to sell, no doubt in part due to stress of the "always on" atmosphere and ruthless competition. Of course, rumors are simply rumors... but given most PR firms have gotten to the point where reaching out to TechCrunch is part of their standard shtick, it's likely not as fun fielding all the inquiries and sticking to others' schedules as openly writing once was. And TechCrunch has burned through its share of strong writers, with talents like Marshall Kirkpatrick and Duncan Riley leaving, one on good terms, and the other, not as well, as it turned out. (See: On Arrington, My Final Word)

The two sites' major detractors tend to rail on common topics. TechCrunch can be seen as egocentric, and Arrington is perceived to have a bee-line on exclusives. Techmeme similarly has been described as elitist by those who don't get included, navel-gazing by those who think it's too insular, biased by those who feel they have been overlooked, or a single person's playground, by those who feel Gabe's claims to automation are overblown. And some industry blog veterans who regularly appear on Techmeme have even taken to saying it's not as relevant and influential as it once was, replaced by other sources of news.

The complaints around either service became so commonplace that a new word, bitchmeme, was made, loosely defined as "bitching about Techmeme", usually on the weekend, when some tech bloggers had no news to write about. The phrase since took on a life of its own, meaning any silly conflict between blogs that took place on the weekend.

TechCrunch and Techmeme get as much grumpiness tossed their direction as they do because they each own a valuable niche in the blogosphere, and are expanding their lead, rather than relinquishing it. While you could say that TechCrunch competes with ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, GigaOM or others, they have cemented themselves as the go-to site for new services entering the market, and even their opinion pieces are widely read, with almost a million unique RSS subscribers taking note. Techmeme's best competition at this point is BlogRunner, with Hacker News, Dave Winer's TechJunk, Duncan Riley's QMeme and more organic sites like RSSmeme or ReadBurner coming up in conversation. But Techmeme's original perceived competition, like TailRank and Megite, are mere shadows of what they initially promised. Meanwhile, TechCrunch is bringing on new writers, and posting more stories than ever (See: The Statbot: TechCrunch Statistics A-W), and Techmeme is going more mainstream, with news sources like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times featuring more prominently than most individual bloggers.

And with this leadership position, the sites don't have the luxury of acting without criticism any longer. Gabe almost has a part-time position made for himself just to go from blog to blog and explaining that in fact, Techmeme is not evil, and that it is relevant, explaining that TechCrunch has built a reputation as a reputable source for tech news, and therefore, is adequately represented on his site and in the leaderboard. Seemingly every day, Gabe is having to answer questions on Twitter or FriendFeed from people like Robert Scoble (or me in one example, when I wondered why a hot topic wasn't getting airtime). Meanwhile, Arrington gets called nasty names, mocked by Valleywag, and yelled at on Twitter.

But if you take a step back, TechCrunch's goal is to be a technology blog focused on Web 2.0, and it's doing that. Techmeme's stated goal is to be like the front page of the memes that are happening in the tech blogosphere at any given time, and for the large part, it does do that. While there is some uncertainty as to all the criteria that makes up being part of Techmeme, or rising up and down the page, or when something makes the site, it typically takes discussion, not only on the original site, but through links from other blogs, on Twitter, and other sharing sites.

The argument could be made that you could possibly find your technology news faster in another way. Maybe you could find it on FriendFeed, and get a broader scope of sources. Maybe you prefer the democratic approach of ReadBurner and RSSmeme. Maybe you want to go through Google Reader yourself, or rely on others' shared link blogs. But there is no question in my mind that Techmeme is relevant, as is TechCrunch, and being mentioned on either site continues to drive traffic today.

I also believe that Techmeme does a very good job at being available to those bloggers who aren't elite household names. Just tonight, we saw a blog that was born only three days ago make the site, and Yuvi Panda's work on The Statbot shows one third of all Techmeme headlines come from the "Long Tail". Techmeme is accessible to bloggers who write quality content and spur discussion. While I'm absolutely active in places like FriendFeed and Twitter, I don't believe that discussions from FriendFeed belong on Techmeme any more than do popular Twitter posts or popular YouTube videos. Techmeme has specialized in bringing us top tech blogging news, and it's doing it.

The bottom line? If you don't like Techmeme and you don't like TechCrunch, stop reading, or go out and make your own. The best way to show they're no longer relevant is to take them down yourself through competition. But today, they are both standing strong whether you like it or not. I just hope Mike Arrington and Gabe Rivera are enjoying what they do as much as when they first started, and that the daily body blows haven't gotten them so jaded that they want out, for that would be a big loss.

ReadBurner Revamps Stats Pages, Expanding Shared Items Analysis

The ReadBurner team continues to make enhancements to the popular Web site dedicated to showing the most popular items shared on Google Reader and Netvibes. Tonight, in advance of their weekly podcast, featuring MG Siegler of ParisLemon and VentureBeat as a guest, they are rolling out upgrade statistics showing the most popular sources, displaying the average number of shares per story for a given author or source in the system.

In a change from the service's previous methodology, the new reports are intended to reward consistency, meaning that a site won't gain from one-time spikes around a popular story, and won't get more prominence due to a higher frequency of posting.


The new stats, seen at http://www.readburner.com/stats, come only a week after RSSmeme debuted new sidebar widgets that show the top tags and top users for the day, as well as widgets that can show who are the most frequent sharers of a specific blog. You can see the "Top Sharers" on the right side of this page to see who shares content from louisgray.com, as well as the tags I use the most to describe my posts.

Both sites are making strides to expand away from simply counting the data to helping analyze it. Both sites also gave a nod today to the morning's news that Chris Wetherell, the main architect behind the amazing Google Reader, will be leaving the company. Had it not been for his efforts, and Google Reader's growth, neither site would exist.

These, and other topics, will undoubtedly be part of the night's discussion with MG. You can tune in here.

OneSpot Makes Publishing Personalized Memetrackers Simple

News aggregation sites that can help highlight the freshest, most relevant or most popular news from around the Web are essential to separating the signal from the noise. But all too often, these memetrackers are siloed, without readers having all that much input into what's considered most relevant, or determining what content gets in and what does not.

The success of Gabe Rivera's Techmeme has had many thinking how they could create their own personal Techmeme, featuring the best of the Web, but only for those topics they're most interested in, or from those sources they choose. Gabe's product, despite some competition from BlogRunner and Megite, as well as others, has remained the most relevant and accepted leader in the space, but its algorithm has left some people wanting more.

Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr leverages FriendFeed, building what he called QMeme, displaying the most popular content on FriendFeed over the last 24 hours from those he follows. Corvida of SheGeeks once said LinkRiver was her own personal Techmeme. Rafe Needleman of WebWare once called ReadBurner a Techmeme for Google Reader. But none of these solutions, while interesting, offer the individual manageability of a new product that's now come available to the Web at large: OneSpot.

Already in place at the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, as well as some more vertically-oriented sites, OneSpot enables anybody to leverage the service's more than 250,000 RSS feeds to design and configure a personal meme, simply by starting with a few "trusted" RSS feeds, and letting OneSpot do the hard work of finding similar feeds on the same topic, and then determining the most popular content.

The result is a highly customizable personal memetracker that can be displayed on a full Web page or as a widget, drawing from the criteria you set, and publishing as frequently as you would like.


The OneSpot Dashboard Lets Me Choose Topics and Schedules
In the last few weeks, I created three memetrackers using OneSpot. One used my blog as the center of the universe (as most bloggers would like). One focused on technology at large. A third, and so far, the most interesting to me, focuses solely on the creators and participants in social media, link aggregation and lifestreaming.

See:
LouisGray.com: Top Stories > OneSpot
LouisGray.com: Social Media Top Stories > OneSpot
LouisGray.com: Technology Top Stories > OneSpot

To configure my personal OneSpot publication, I entered a few "Trusted Feeds", and OneSpot then found thousands of "Related Feeds", allowing me to see the name of the feed, when it was last updated, and giving me two choices: to add the feed to my "Trusted" bucket, or to "Remove" it from the list of options.

I found OneSpot's recommendation engine to be very good. If I showed louisgray.com as a Trusted Feed, OneSpot recommended SheGeeks, The Last Podcast, the Official ReadBurner Blog, Benjamin Golub, Webomatica and a few others, no doubt leveraging my own previous linking behavior.


Trusted Feeds I Posted to my Social Media OneSpot

Related Feeds Suggested for my Social Media OneSpot
For the Social Media publication, I had added the main blogs for FriendFeed, ReadBurner, Toluu, Shyftr and others, and OneSpot recommended I also add blogs from Assetbar and Twitter. Very cool.

OneSpot is extremely flexible, letting me schedule updates as frequently as 60 minutes apart, letting me customize the memetracker's look and feel, or even to add up/down voting recommendations or comments. At a time when news organizations like the Associated Press are throwing up roadblocks in how you link to or highlight their content, why not use OneSpot to make your own memetracker using sources you trust?

Giving a Service Wings By Pushing Them from the Nest

For those of us blogging who like to break the news by announcing new services, and using our site as their platform to debut, it can be tempting to pull an "old world" journalism mentality and claim that topic as "our turf", resenting anybody else who tries to step in and steal the thunder by posting the news first, or even feeling betrayed if the entrepreneur takes the news somewhere else. But I've seen that after what I consider an incubation period, the fastest-growing services do best when I can step back and let them take their first steps away from the nest, as they engage with other bloggers, gaining them a new audience and greater exposure.

In this analogy, it can be nerve-wracking to see the little ones as they leave the nest. I worry the new caregivers might not see them in the same way I do. The new influencer might be cruel or may not recognize their talents. But to try and protect them by keeping them in the nest could stunt their growth.

As mentioned in yesterday's popular post, the first stage of being an early adopter can at times be indistinguishable from the service's PR or Marketing firm, as you try to make a product you like extremely visible. You've no doubt seen me do this, as I'll not just help by introducing a product, but keeping you posted on its updates, from Assetbar to ReadBurner, FriendFeedMachine, RSSmeme and Toluu.

But there comes a time when the right thing to do is let go, when the service has gained such momentum that I instead suggest the developer reach out to other sites to get a broader perspective and more exposure, so that their service is less tied in with me, and seen, instead as more of the broader landscape.

Don't get me wrong. I love exclusives, and part of my journalism background makes the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I know that someone who might be considered competition is writing about the same topic at the same time with the same deadline. But lately, for services that have gotten some traction, I've opted out of story opportunities and encouraged the developer to get some new voices talking instead.

A prime example of this was with Toluu yesterday. On Wednesday, Caleb Elston reached out to me with some great new service updates, including details on subscriptions within Toluu by feed, and story popularity, in part helped by AideRSS. I told Caleb that instead of waiting for me, to take his outreach to the next level, and it worked, without question. Yesterday ended up being a record-setting day for Toluu, after what Hutch Carpenter called a great example of social media marketing, by participating and reaching out to bloggers and following Toluu references on both FriendFeed and Twitter.

Similarly, RSSmeme announced options to find similar sharers of data to you, and integrated widgets on each page that show top tags and sharers for that blog or topic. See: Using RSSmeme To Find Similar Sharers: Louis Gray’s Example. Having just given RSSmeme a ton of credit last Saturday on being the authority on Google Reader sharing notes, I again waved the white flag, and told Benjamin to spread the word. He did, leveraging a custom room on FriendFeed for RSSmeme, to update followers, also adding RSSmeme as a user of the service, and today, leveraging the FriendFeed API to speed up the site.

You can see how other services have taken steps to leave the nest, as other sites, often much bigger than mine, take up the rallying cry:

ReadBurner:
The Inquisitr: ReadBurner Gets Digg Like Features

Shyftr:
Mashable: Shyftr Beats Google Reader with OPML Imports

LinkRiver:
SheGeeks: LinkRiver is My Personal Techmeme

Part of being a good partner to new services is knowing when to let go, and to see if the service has wings. A few weeks ago, I wrote to one pair of entrepreneurs, "Let me know if there's anything else I can do, but I do believe it's going to come down to you guys being more visible." With everything else that's going on, I can't possibly do it all myself. That's why, even though it can be bittersweet on occasion, the right thing to do is let them take a risk and let go. It gives others, like Corvida, the opportunity to do a social media roundup on service updates, and it's best for the community at large.

ReadBurner Podcast Talks Comments, Twitter, FeedBurner Ads

After a few months participating in the Elite Tech News podcast each Sunday evening, I was excited to be invited by Drew Olanoff and Adam Ostrow of ReadBurner to participate in their ReadBurner Weekly Live podcast this evening.

Although I already knew the two guys were sharp from my previous interactions with Drew and Adam via e-mail, Twitter and seeing their blogs, it was absolutely a pleasure to talk with them both about the big issues of the week. My only regret from the call was that Skype and TalkShoe didn't get along all that well, so when you listen, you'll hear me drop off the call four separate times. Frickin' Skype...

Topics included:

• Once again, the diversity of new places to make comments, away from the original blog.
  
• The integration of AdSense and Feedburner to post ads in RSS.
  
• How to bring RSS to the mainstream?
  
• Twitter's continued uptime issues.
  
• Continued improvements to ReadBurner, including chiclets and the addition of a "Breaking News" feature.
  
• What would Techmeme look like without content from the Techmeme leaderboard? (101+).

You can find the archive on the Official ReadBurner Blog or download the MP3 file directly here. It weighs in at 27 megabytes. Be sure you "fast forward" five minutes, as it appears the recording was turned on well too early.

Also, as for the Elite Tech News podcast, the team completed another successful call Sunday, with guest panelist Tamar Weinberg. You can find it on Mashable: Elite Tech News #10: Crickets.