In a squib a day or so back, I pointed to a new source for aggregated blog posts on media — Journalism Daily — and added the comment that it seemed to be “missing much of what I find interesting about the media blogophere.”
I want to expand on that a little, based at least on comments and some email correspondence with Mike Reining of SocialRank, the folks behind the site. As I originally told Mike, I think aggregator sites are important in that they bring together a wide range of discussions about niche topics. They expose stories of import and interest to a wider audience, and they make it possible for the poor overwhelmed web user to get a handle on the clutter.
At the same time, because aggregators are most often based on links, comments and other “popularity” metric to identify the most-discussed items, they tend to miss some interesting and important stuff going on at smaller, less-well-connected and less-read sites.
In his email to me, Mike wrote:
SocialRank actually monitors every blog over time and it takes into consideration how popular a blog is overall. We recognize the fact that “popular blogs” tend to get more comments and links where as niche blogs do not. However, when a niche site publishes something interesting SocialRank will pick this up and elevate this to the top over an average post from popular blogs.
That’s great. And the explanation of how SocialRank works at the site suggests that it takes time for the software to build a deep picture of the mediasphere, so that it’s pulling from the full range of comment and reporting. Users can also recommend their own favourite media blogs, which will further widen the pool.
So, we’ll have to see what happens as Journalism Daily develops. It’s still a work in progress, though. At the moment, the most interesting 15 media stories — and there’s no doubt that most of them are interesting — come from only seven sources (Lost Remote, Buzzmachine, PaidContent, News Videographer, Telegraph.co.uk, Howard Owens and Medialoper).
And, to expand on what I wrote about my personal reaction — that it’s currently missing much of what I find interesting about the media blogophere — I’ll add that only one of today’s Daily Journalism’s most interesting story was included in the 11 media-related stories I found interesting enough to point to today. Wile I can see the definite value and potential in Journalism Daily, it’s not as valuable to me as an RSS reader full of feeds is.
TAGS: JOURNALISM, BLOGGING, MEDIASCAPE
Mike:
Looking forward to V2 and, as I wrote, the continuing evolution of SocialRank. As for the links I found, some were from bloggers, some from media organizations and some from media: it’s as mixed as the sites I browse. (The links are in my Friday Squibs and the Friday Business Round-up post.)
The point I was trying to make is that for someone like me, who lives and breathes this stuff, no site that is going to find the 15 most interesting stories (or even 20 or 30) will hit all of the things that interest me, or be able to replace the 300+ feeds in my RSS reader.
That doesn’t make SocialRank any less valuable; it only less valuable to me.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for elaborating and continuing the conversation. I could love to find out the 11 stories you discovered today that you found interesting but that were not on SocialRank. Could you please send them to me. I am wondering if you are reading blogs that our algorithm has not yet discovered / considered or if these stories are coming out of the popular press. Either way, we are already working on V2 of SocialRank, which will be able to cast a far wider net to greatly expand our scope so that we further help readers discover today’s most interesting stories on the topic they care about.