Tweetmeme arrives to track Twitter’s hottest links
January 28 Mike Butcher
UK firm Fav.or.it, a yet-to-launch blog commenting system, has launched a seperate project called Tweetmeme, which will track what’s hot on micro-blogging platform Twitter. As I write on TechCrunch.com today, the business of tracking the online conversation just a got shot in the arm with the tech equivalent of crack cocaine.
Tweetmeme looks for new content and tracks who else is talking about it. It ranks the content based upon who and how much a particular item is being discussed. As anyone knows, the number of URLs which spread virally through Twitter each day must run into the millions, so tracking where that viral trail starts and gains momentum is going to be fascinating. It also categorises the content into blogs / videos / images and audio. Sure there are other Twitter aggregators like Politweets (politics), TweeterBoard (conversation analytics) and many others. But Tweetmeme has a few other features including a ‘river’ of new content and RSS feeds for the river (or categorized feeds for blogs / videos / images / audio). In addition Fav.or.it will integrate Tweetmeme into its API so you’ll be able to comment on blog posts through Tweetmeme. [For an explanation of how Fav.or.it will work see here and here. Favorit won seed funding last month].
The knockout punch is that Tweetmeme will Twitter the original person who first mentioned the item if it makes it onto Tweetmeme. What this means is that Twitter users will get to see if they are the first person to Tweet a cool/hot news URL or not. It’s going to be interesting to see where all this leads.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:04 am
January 29th, 2008 at 10:54 am
January 31st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Comments
January 28th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I wrote a few days ago that it would be better to see Mike B have his work posted on TC.com in order to make more of an impact and today three posts appear. Coincidence?
So is TCUK closing soon? Given no one commented here on the UK story/companies related to twittermeme - it seems no one will be sad to see this odd outpost closer and for you Mike B to write about UK/Europe on TC.com.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:06 am
As it happens we figured the Tweetmeme story was right for TC.com as Twitter is a US company and Tweetmeme is aimed at a global audience. The other posts to which you refer were relevant for TC.com because they are about firms presenting at DEMO (US conference) who are also creating offerings either global in nature (Huddle) or aimed at a US audience (as HubDub is at launch). In case you hadn’t realised, this site definitely has a role to play, and since the amount of ‘friction’ involved in writing for TC.com and TCUK is next to nothing as makes no odds I will continue to do so. Or would you like us to lose the ability to have our own UK/Irish startups focused blog even now, after all this time and after so many people called for it?
January 29th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Mike I like what you write but for the sake of UK startups, wouldn’t it be more valuable to have your coverage on a larger stage. There are nearly 5k subscribers here compared to 600k on TC.com
If I was Huddle, Favour.it, Nestoria, TrustedPlaces etc where would I want news about my company covered.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Rest assured, there is going to be plenty of opportunity to cover companies in an appropriate way on the appropriate site to the appropriate audience. TCUK is a perfectly valid brand for its market and now we have it, it would be premature to throw it away. But thanks for your feedback.