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The 100 essential websites … Techmeme
— The Guardian   (12/9/09)

One of my favorite sites is Techmeme...
— David F. Gallagher, New York Times technology editor   (9/28/09)

… people will keep relying on Techmeme as not just a source of news links but as the agenda setter.
— Rafe Needleman, CNET News   (3/11/09)

TechMeme continues to be the news aggregator I check multiple times per day to keep up on tech news.
— Michael Arrington, TechCrunch in 2009's "Products I Can't Live Without" (see also 2008, 2007, and 2006)   (1/4/09)

Many of us in the tech community know and love Techmeme, a tech news aggregation site. For finding the newest tech stories that people are writing about, there's simply nothing better
—VentureBeat   (11/28/08)

Rivera's Techmeme has fast become the tech news source of record…
— BusinessWeek , from "The 25 Most Influential People on the Web"   (9/29/08)

My desert island RSS feed would be Techmeme, which is a pretty good way to get a bird's eye view of what's going on in the tech sphere.
— Ryan Block, Former Engadget Editor-in-Chief   (6/5/08)

Techmeme is well known amongst tech bloggers and readers, quite simply because it's second to none in keeping up with tech news.
— Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb   (12/26/07)

TechMeme is brilliant.
— Jason Calacanis, founder, Mahalo; cofounder, Weblogs, Inc.   (10/10/07)

… TechMeme brilliantly unearths the hottest news stories.
— Kyle Monson, PC Magazine   (8/27/07)

… Techmeme, the best aggregator of technology news …
— Nick Denton, Founder and Publisher, Gawker Media   (6/5/07)

Let's just say that TechMeme is one of the first sites I check in the morning when I get up — and I keep checking it all day until I go to bed.
— Pete Rojas, Engadget and Gizmodo Founding Editor (in remarks to Beet.TV)   (5/13/07)

… the technology underlying Techmeme — and sister sites WeSmirch, Memeorandum, and Ballbug — may prove to be the most powerful way to harness the blogosphere's investigative power.
— PC World, from "The 50 Most Important People on the Web"   (3/5/07)

Over the past decade, I've seen a lot of search tools that were supposed to transform my life. Few of them have. But Techmeme was one of those.
— Danny Sullivan, founder and editor, Search Engine Land   (1/17/07)

I am an unabashed TechMeme fan. … TechMeme's accuracy, clustering, timeliness and scannability make it an essential service …
— Dan Farber, CNET News Editor in Chief   (1/4/07)

Techmeme &hellip continues to draw me in many times a day because of the quality of the stories or posts and the associated links to other blogs.
— Rob Hof, BusinessWeek   (11/26/06)

Look no further than memeorandum, the site that aggregates the hottest topics on the Web each day.
— Vaughn Ververs, CBS News   (8/12/06)

… a good news filter can help you zero in on the news you care about. … Techmeme is among the best of these services.
— Ryan Singel, PC World   (6/23/06)

WeSmirch.com [is] a solid aggregator of celebrity news.
— Entertainment Weekly   (6/18/06)

Memeorandum is what Google News should've been.
— Doc Searls, protoblogger & Cluetrain Manifesto coauthor   (2/4/06)

Amongst Memetrackers, Memeorandum is Money … a simple, easy to comprehend, user experience.
— Om Malik, GigaOM   (2/3/06)

The easiest way to follow this world is via a useful blog-tracking service called tech.memeorandum.
— Lee Gomes, The Wall Street Journal   (12/7/05)

Pajama people … you'll never do it as quickly or usefully as Memeorandum, anyway.
— Scott Rosenberg, Salon   (11/18/05)

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Techmeme News

Why does memeorandum exist?

Posted Monday, September 12, 2005 8:52PM ET by Gabe Rivera     Permalink

What are my goals for this site? I want it to address some unfulfilled needs in online news. They are:

  1. Recognize the web as editor: There's this notion that blogs collectively function as news editor. No, not every last blog on Earth. Tapping the thoughts of all of humanity uniformly would predictably lead to trivial, even spammy "news". But today there are rather large communities of knowledgeable, sophisticated commentators, (and yes) even reporters writing on the web, signaling in real time what's worthy of wider discussion. I want memeorandum to tap this signal.
  2. Rapidly uncover new sources: Sometimes breaking news is posted to a blog created just to relate that news. Sometimes the author of the most insightful analysis piece at 2PM was a relative unknown at 1PM. It happens. I want memeorandum to highlight such work, without delay.
  3. Relate the conversation: Communication on the web naturally tends toward conversation. It follows from human nature plus the Internet's immediacy. Blog posts react to news articles, essays reference editorials. And links abound. Yet most news sites do very little to relate the form of conversations unfolding in real time. Some seem to deny that a conversation is even occurring. I want memeorandum to be a clear exception.

And so memeorandum offers a set of pages, each page highlighting the best contributions from a different community of writers, recognizing new sources as soon as the community does, and in a form conveying ongoing conversations. Consider each page a news section, or vertical, if you will. For now, there are two: First, memeorandum tracks mostly politics plus various current affairs. Second, tech.memeorandum focuses on technology, particularly business news and innovations in computing and the Internet.

These pages are built automatically, through software, ala Google News. Building the software wasn't easy, and there's a lot more to do to perfect it. But I feel the site represents a big step toward the goals described here.

So I hope you like it. I do!

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