Last month, working only with Microsoft Excel and archived Techmeme pages, I took a look at how the top ten sites on Techmeme's leaderboard had changed over the first six months of Gabe Rivera offering the rankings. But I knew my minor effort would be no match for a statistically-oriented tech maven, like Yuvi Panda, who has kicked off what should be a very interesting series of posts examining the popular site and how it gets its news.

To date, Techmeme has been something of a black box. Leading bloggers love seeing the regularity of their posts being included. Meanwhile, less visible posters see complaining about Techmeme as something as a rite of passage. Some even claim impropriety and bias, while others still complain the site can be flooded with me-too news and copycats.

But that doesn't change the fact that Techmeme is tremendously relevant and a must-subscribe, either by RSS or by Twitter. To ignore Techmeme is the tech news equivalent of unsubscribing from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and hoping the local town daily can fill the gap.

In my initial look at Techmeme, I had observed that just over 30 percent of all stories came from the top 10 sites from the Techmeme leaderboard, and more than 40 percent came from sites ranked 11-100, leaving about 30 percent to "the field". Luckily for me, Yuvi's first pass at Techmeme arrives at similar results, saying "One third of Techmeme’s headlines come from the Long Tail".


A Graph from The StatBot's Techmeme Analysis
If you think The StatBot's efforts at this point are simply echoing my first pass, don't be fooled. Yuvi has a lot more tech savvy at his disposal, and as he promises in today's post, today's entry is the first in a series. You can expect to be something of a Techmeme expert by the time he's done.

We previously introduced The StatBot here: The StatBot Launches to Analyze Blog and Web Trends, Statistics. Yuvi also lent a hand analyzing my own site here: Analyzing LouisGray.com's Links, Topics, Timing and Comments.

In March, we highlighted 5 Blog Candidates for Tomorrow's Techmeme Leaderboard. In April, I suggested Five More Blogs You Should Be Reading, But Aren't. Since then, a number of these lesser-known bloggers have seen their posts gain higher visibility, including hitting the aforementioned Techmeme, and gaining both RSS subscribers and repeat visitors. (See: SheGeeks Reaches New Heights and When Your Blog Is LouisGrayCrunched... as good examples)

With the new month upon us, I'm thinking we could make posts of this sort a regular feature. Over the last 30 days, I continue to be impressed by the solid writings of many bloggers who, to date, have been below the radar. Here are five who cover the social media space who've I've enjoyed getting to see of late:

1) Colin Walker (colinwalker.me.uk)

Focus: Social Media, Blogging and the Internet
Recent Highlight: Why do we need social media role models?
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

2) Regular Geek (regulargeek.com)

Focus: Programming, Social Media and the Internet
Recent Highlight: Comment Where You Want, Just Let Me Know About It
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

3) Chris Miller / The Social Networker (thesocialnetworker.com)

Focus: Virtual Gratification Syndrome, Twitter, Data Portability
Recent Highlight: Tweeting In the Bathroom - the New Social Crime
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

4) Julian Baldwin / Notes, Thoughts, Ideas and Responses (julianbaldwin.com)

Focus: Social Media, Twitter
Recent Highlight:
Killing Many Birds With One Boulder, How and When Social Media Can Go Mainstream
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

5) Alexander van Elsas (vanelsas.wordpress.com)

Focus: New Media, Technology, Social Behavior
Recent Highlight: The Tech Elite Creates Its Own Web 2.0 Bubble
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

I'm always looking for more new bloggers and interesting voices to be added to my Google Reader feeds. You can get an early tip as to new bloggers I'm following and sharing by signing up for Toluu, following me on FriendFeed, or following my Google Reader shared links blog. If you think there are more I should check out, please leave them in the comments.

After more than a dozen solid years teaching social studies, as well as a number of other subjects here and there, at the junior high and high school level, my wife, for the first time, turned her back on the school year well prior to graduation, and we don't know when she'll go back. As of 5:00 p.m. this evening, she's officially on maternity leave, in theory, resting up until the big day when our twins are scheduled to launch in early beta.

Our home is by no means ready. We're still in the process of converting our odds & ends/junk room/guest room into something resembling a place for our kids to stay. For the most part, this has consisted of us carting box after box to Public Storage, and becoming ever more generous to Good Will. In the meantime, we've had good friends and colleagues donate clothes, diapers and all manner of toys for the as of yet unseen youngsters.

In the next few weeks, we still need to move out some furniture, bring in a crib, dresser, changing table, and rocker with matching ottoman. Some of these things have already been ordered from Babies R Us or Amazon. Others, we'll get from friends. But as the days go by, and my wife gets a tad bigger and a tad more fatigued, this is getting more and more real. After five years as a married couple, offering shelter to only ourselves and a cantankerous old beagle, who refuses to step down from her post, we're going have to learn how to go from two to four overnight, and how to take one income and make it do more than what our two once did.

We're absolutely looking forward to this challenge. I can't say I'm ready. I don't know that anybody I've ever met says they were 100% ready to transition from being without kids to with kids. I believe I have a great chance at being very prepared, and with patience, I just might be an adequate parent. My wife should be excellent as well, but we didn't exactly set ourselves up to have a trial run, going from no dependents to two immediately.

In the last few months, after revealing our big secret, the chorus has been overwhelming, as a good number of parents have said, often with smirks on their faces, that "life as you know it will end". It's been predicted that activity here on the blog will slow or altogether disappear. My priorities will be turned completely upside down. And... don't I know it! As much as I want to display bravado, and plan for a minimum level of disruption, inwardly, we're realistic. We know we're looking into the light ahead, and it just might be an oncoming train.

This coming Monday, I'll be the only one going back to work. And the week after that. And after that... and so on for a while. We've already agreed as a family that my wife will take the upcoming school year off, and depending how well-behaved our kids are, or how well we're doing financially, or if she's bored out of her mind, who knows what will come next... but I'll do my best to keep you posted, as best as we can. Because, if you haven't figured it out yet, I'll do all I can to keep the blog a priority, sleep be darned. We don't know when the twins will come, but the doctors are saying it could be mid-June to early July. Watch this space.

Some of the most confused buzzwords in Web 2.0 are those of aggregation and lifestreaming.

As evidenced by the many different sites that have debuted offering a single location for differing online activities, harnessing together RSS feeds from Web services and presenting them as one, delivering a base foundation for aggregation is not all that hard.

Plaxo did it. Profilactic did it. Iminta did it. Socialthing did it. FriendFeed did it. Facebook is starting to do it.

But simple aggregation is not enough. What FriendFeed got right very early on in the game is that it's one thing to get all the services in one page, and quite another to make them interactive, so friends can talk to friends and peers can show peers what they like. Back in November, I wrote, "I first became interested in FriendFeed as the service could aggregate friends' Web activity in a single place. But in recent weeks, it's grown to be much more."

FriendFeed became more because of two things: participation and discovery.

FriendFeed let me respond and interact with the services my friends were sharing. It also allowed me to discover new services, new friends and new sources for information. Through FriendFeed, I've found new blogs to read, found new online social circles, and engaged in real-time with people who are completely unreachable, even by e-mail or Twitter.

Now, as the early adopter crowd has found the FriendFeed religion, despite the occasional grumpy holdout, they're now finding that the real potential in FriendFeed, as with other Web services, comes through participation. It's one thing to passively aggregate your online activity in a single place, and quite another to thoughtfully add comments and like items you find interesting, and think your friends will. Robert Scoble, now as prominent a FriendFeed advocate as I ever have been, has highlighted this factor in The really interesting FriendFeed page to watch tonight, where he notes FriendFeed has set up separate "discussion" pages that aggregate comments and likes. (His | Mine)

Google Reader became the leading RSS feed reader for me not just because it was a strong, quick, offering, but because of the shared link items blog. Twitter is actually useful due to tracking of @Replies and the ability to see others streams intermingled. But to sign up to any of these services to broadcast, and not to participate, shortchanges the process.

There's a reason I've made more than 1,200 comments in FriendFeed since signing up in October, and why I've "Liked" almost 700 different items. It's not because I have a bot set up to do my dirty work. It's because it helps both those I follow, and those who follow me. Take away that participation, and FriendFeed becomes as quiet as a library, and just about as exciting.

So if you're not quite sure where to start with FriendFeed, with Google Reader, with Twitter or any other social network, get started and participate. That'll make all the difference.