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Something wrong with Techmeme?

Deep Jive Interests is complaining that Techmeme didn’t pick up on the death of HD-DVD, which is definitely a very, very big story, but instead has been features a post about the failure of S3 on the top of the page.

In Techmeme’s defense, I have to say that there is definitely something wrong over at Techmeme right now. If you look at the right side where the newest items are featured, all of them are over 8 hours old and an older post about Blogger allowing future postings keeps cycling in and out of the list.

Typically, even on a slow, day, those items wouldn’t be older than half an hour to an hour. The Techmeme River, by the way, has picked up a couple of HD-DVD stories.

Maybe Gabe Rivera can fill us in…

Here is a screenshot.

Think it’s just the weekend effect, maybe a tiny bit more pronounced than usual. The prior two weekends were abnormally active due to MSFT/YHOO developments, but this one appears to be just a normal slow weekend…

I was about to comment the exact same thing Gabe just said (about MSFT/YHOO making the past 2 weekends crazy, whereas normally they are like this) but he beat me to it – damn he’s fast.

My hypothesis is that the velocity that something reaches Techmeme has to do with a number of factors, some of which includes the relative “strength” of the website promoting the story (Techcrunch clearly >>>> Engadget, as the latter, amongst tech blogs, “broke” the story, while the former hasn’t even touched on it yet), and the number of lamprey/feeder blogs (like mine) linking to it.

Meh. Just a thought.

t @ dji

… sorry, that was half formed thought …

the reply should have continued:

“… because it was a slow weekend, and none of the real heavy weights picked up on it, and still of the feeder blogs were linking to it, it got less push then it probably deserves.”

The latter, of course, is my humble opinion, only.

t @ dji
ps. I’d like to take a second to just mention that some blogs / sites, such as Techcrunch, are weighted so powerfully on Techmeme that seemingly insignificant non-news posts make it to Techmeme without any difficulty whatsoever; this effect is particularly potent / magnified on Sunday afternoons.

Maybe it was just earlier in the day but when I checked Techmeme I wasn’t seeing stories that old in the new item finder.

Thanks for the answers guys – maybe it was just the weekend effect. It was just strange to see all the new stories show up in the River but not on the main page.