That headline is meant as a joke, by the way. But like many jokes, it has some truth at the center of it. Do I like to see my posts linked to on Techmeme? Sure I do — and I get the sense that Fred Wilson does too, even though he’s a fantastically rich and well-respected venture capitalist who presumably has lots of other things that make him feel great about what he’s doing. And I think Dave Winer likes to see himself on there too, even though he has a kind of love/hate co-dependent relationship.
I think Fred makes a good point about the site drawing more from other places — places that aren’t really blogs in the strict sense, in that they aren’t written by a single individual. But is that a bad thing? I’m not sure it is. I suppose it would be if you were used to a Techmeme that consisted mostly of your friends, which I think Fred (and probably Dave) are suggesting it used to be. But isn’t that a little like the guy who has a great mountain view from his house, and then complains that all these new people are moving in and wrecking it? Why shouldn’t they get some of that view too?
Not a great analogy, maybe. But I think Fred is overstating the case a bit too. Jeff Jarvis is still on Techmeme regularly, and as a headline post plenty of the time. Rex Hammock is on there plenty too. Calacanis might not be, but only because all he seems to write about lately is Mahalo and (occasionally) fat-blogging. But maybe all those FOFs (friends of Fred) aren’t there as much — and I think that’s okay. We’re getting some new bloggers that are adding new points of view, like Ashkan at WatchMojo and Allen Stern at Centernetworks and ParisLemon and The Last Podcast.
Are we getting USA Today and places like that too? Sure we are — because blogs and media are blending. And that’s as it should be. Blogs aren’t just for the geeks and blognoscenti anymore. Is that going to boost the noise in the signal-to-noise ratio? Perhaps. But there’s more signal out there too. And yes, Techmeme is going to encourage people to “game” the system to try and push their posts up. So what? Don’t click on them. There’s still lots of great opinions and ideas out there — more than there ever were, in fact.