Scripting News: Techmeme is officially a cesspool

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Techmeme is officially a cesspool

It was intriguing for a day or two, but now it's clear that the Leaderboard was the dumbest idea ever, because now more than ever, people are gaming Techmeme so they can climb the list.

Reminds me of something Ted Turner once said about how the Forbes list of richest people in the world was the worst thing ever for philanthropy. If you're super-rich, now you don't want to give it away because when you do, you move down (or off) the list.

Techmeme was already severely polluted by people saying stupid shit to rise to the top of the page. That was an ephemeral high. Now there's a way to accumulate points toward more persistent rank, and everyone who isn't on the list, wants to be on the list.

I'm thinking of this idiotic post by an idiot who's known for saying idiotic things just to get attention.

Or Scoble, who started on the list near the bottom -- is rapidly rising. How's he doing it? By saying extreme things that people will react to. That's how you get points in the Techmeme universe. Scoble ain't no idiot. If he wants to rise on the list, he rises.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. ";->"

Well, this ain't blogging, and we're still getting ready to start a war with Iran, and the stock market is still acting weird, and there are still big ideas out there to pursue, and now Techmeme isn't even worth reading when the top item on a weekday is guaranteed to be some idiot procliaming himself king of the hill. It's worse than AM talk radio.

PS: A piece I wrote in May offering a vision for "Web 3.0."

PPS: Mike Arrington weighs in. "Gabe sometimes edits stuff like this off of TechMeme to keep it stocked with real news." Hmmm. I'd be surprised if that were true.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:42 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Sep Nov