The Man Machine Media Memeoeditor (not quite so random methinks)

Techmeme is moving more to blended curation via algorithm and human input. Its an interesting area, one thats been much on our minds since looking at how Video Aggregation would be done, and also since listening to the BBC talk on Social Media Moderation at Amplified 08, and also looking at my how we blend Algorithms and Human input:

The exact impacts Techmeme predicts are:

Humans have always edited Techmeme of course, just implicitly. For instance, when a blogger links to a story, the headline might move higher on Techmeme. What's different now is that an additional human editor will carry out changes explicitly to directly improve the mix of headlines on Techmeme. Though the implicit edits conveyed via algorithm outnumber the explicit edits perhaps by 1000 to 1 or more, the impact of the human editor is nonetheless pronounced. What will that effect be?

The news will just get faster and more interesting. Obsolete stories will be eliminated sooner while breaking stories will be expedited. Related grouping will improve. Most of this will happen only on Techmeme, though other sites (like memeorandum and WeSmirch) will increasingly benefit from the direct human touch as well.

And gaming will be easier to spot...question of course is, is it scalable? Techmeme seems to imply it thinks so:

I should note that the experience of introducing direct editing has been a revelation even for us, despite the fact that we planned it. Interacting directly with an automated news engine makes it clear that the human+algorithm combo can curate news far more effectively that the individual human or algorithmic parts. It really feels like the age of the news cyborg has arrived. Our goal is to apply this new capability to producing the clearest and most useful tech news overview available.

Though effective here may not mean efficiency. I also hope that it trades some laterality, ie keeps a bit of deviation around the standard mainstream signals - serendipty among the datastreams. Also, one suspects a rapid rise in attempts at PR seduction of the human interface to the Algorithms - enjoy

Still, this is, I suspect, one of the emerging props of the foundations of the New Media Industry. Long term we suspect bit by bit the human bits of curation will be replaced by better and more intelligent automation. We are in the spinning jenny phase of automated aggregation.... just starting to pick up the threads, as it were