I Need a Meta Memetracker

Lately there's been a ton of discussion in the blogosphere about memetrackers (mostly Digg vs. the New Netscape). Some breathless speculation even suggests that these sites could overtake more traditional media properties like the New York Times, if not in influence at least in numbers.

First, for those who may yet be unfamiliar with these sites, they basically give users the opportunity to vote on online content they like. The more votes, the higher the content rises within the memetracker site's hierarchy. The primary difference between the two is that Digg operates as a pure democracy where users' votes are the sole determining factor in what rises to the top. The New Netscape can be thought of more as a republic where the views of the populace are considered, but at the end of the day editors select from among the most voted for content to decide what appears first.

The New Netscape also tries to engage in what I'd describe as "secondary journalism" by following up on the content that users nominate. For instance, if someone runs a blog post complaining about a particular company and it rises to the top of the New Netscape, editors there will contact the blogger and the company to get more of the story.

Essentially, both of these services (and other semi-automated ones like TailRank and TechMeme) attempt to take advantage of the Long Tail and expose users to content they may otherwise have overlooked. I certainly think there's a role for such services, and in fact I use several of them myself to stay on top of trends.

There is often a tendency among them, however, to effectively drive the conversation rather than to report on it, especially with TechMeme. For example, bloggers seeking traffic will often see topics on TechMeme and comment on them, simply in an effort to pick up some traffic from that service. I have certainly seen the impact that can be had for one of my blogs when TechMeme links, so the incentive is clearly there.

What I'd love to see is a service that combines the best of all of these services -- call it a "meta memetracker" that pulls data from the existing sites. It would then aggregate it and perhaps even allow the user to custom weight the significance of different ones. For instance, I might like the automated power of TechMeme over the editor influenced New Netscape, or vice versa.

And ideally this new service would then be able to learn what I like to allow more effective use of my time in reviewing stories. For instance, it might factor in the blogs I read by allowing me to upload my OPML file. And based on which items I click on, it could help figure out which topics interest me most. And finally a way to mark content that I never want to see again.

Finally, I'd love the service to blend all of this with a great feed reader. That way I could effectively have one-stop shopping for my daily information gathering.

Any smart entrepreneurs out there up to the challenge?

Tags: memetracker, digg, netscape, techmeme, tailrank