Most everyone has been violently itching to get away from TechCrunch lately, following the endless fiascoes led lately by Erick Schonfeld. I have been repeatedly asked in the past few weeks, where do I turn for news if TechCrunch is slowly going the way of the Buffalo? Simple, I turn to TechMeme.com If you have never used TechMeme, you are in for a treat.
TechMeme is a semi automated news system that depends somewhat on a lone human editor to sift through thousands of online news sources, find the most important ones, and then display all the related content spinning off of the breaking story. Sounds amazing? It simply is:
TechMeme on a recent day
Here we can see a recent screenshot of the Techmeme homepage, displaying several major stories, and then in the lower sectioned, linked commentary that is pertinent to that topic. Each commentary section is filled out as the story continues to develop, and if there is a large enough change, it becomes a sub-headline with its own commentary section. You can see this under the “Facebook” story, where there is a second headline entitled “Primates on Facebook.”
TechMeme is constantly live, all day every day. It always seems to bring in the newest breaking news before I can even begin to discover it. Also, if you are researching your own post on the topic, the discussion links are indispensable.
Back to TechCrunch, they are here. In fact, according to the TechMeme leaderboard they are the number one source of content for TechMeme. Despair not, that only means that the comprise a screaming 4.5% of the links. That is livable. And also this compares favorably to the 100% of TechCrunch posts that end up on TechCrunch.com.
Jokes aside, you can even get your own content linked on TechMeme if you are quick enough. If you manage to break a story, however that may be, you tell the TechMeme editors about it through Twitter. Send them this “Tip @Techmeme STORY NAME HERE <LINK>” and they will pick it up if they find it newsworthy. Â Keeps the flow of news open, and fast.
Downsides? You can get lost in the links sometimes. And you cannot always get a good consensus view of a topic. You merely have all the voices; it is up to you collate the views into something understandable. And the site is pretty damn basic, if you are offended by the Reddit-esque stripped down feel.
What else? If you want a break from the hot air factories around the net, and want a better look at breaking news, TechMeme is for you, give it a try.
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Alex Wilhelm writes at AlexWilhelm.com, and can be reached at Alex@TheNextInTech.com