The Meme Streets

Jeremiah Owyang has written a nice post on "types of Techmemers":

The Five types of publishers on the Techmeme site:

The Original: Often where the story or idea breaks, this is the first instance of the topic being discovered. Unfortunately, this person doesn’t always get the H1 spot as the lead node.

The Breaker: This can be mainstream news source or a mainstream blogger that discovers the story from the Original News Source and blogs it, as a result, they often become the top node, even if they arnen’t the original source. It seems as if some websites are naturally geared to be an “H1″ even if they are resonators.

The Resonator: Also referred to as those who echo or copy, they repeat what was already said, adding little or no additional content, news or opinion. You’ll often see lines and lines of these in the H3.

The CounterPoint: This person often spins editorial the opposite way of the lead story, and takes the opposite viewpoint, exploring the downsides of any viewpoint. They often become and H2, and sometimes overtake the H1.

The Encapsulator: These bloggers often summarize the entire long thread of a discussion, listing out the point and counterpoints and nicely creating a digest for those late to the story can quickly catch up on.

(By H1, H2, H3 Jeremiah is referring to headline size in Heading Size speak - H1 = largest etc)

Some thoughts:

(i) It is far easier for a Big Blog (high linkage, high profile) to be an original or a breaker. I'm sure we're not the only smaller blog to see something we've said then said later by someone better known and hit the headlines. These are the "H1 Resonators".

(ii) Counterpointers are frustrating in that in many ways they are Pythonesque - saying "No it Isn't". There are a few people who specialise in this, and over time you start to see who they are and scrub them.

(iii) I think there is a 6th type - I'll call them Builders - those who build on something that has been said (this can be to decry it as well as agree with it) and I think (hope) we are one of these. Builders read a post (not necessarily on Techmeme by the way - I look at my RSS feeds and feel free to comment on anything incoming), feel they have something to add to the conversation, and put your point of view in. If one articulates it very well (or get a great headline ) you may be lucky (in our case 2 or 3 times so far) and hit an H2 spot, which for a small blog is as much as can usually be expected - usually you get a few great links and comments.

These Builders are the people I like to read on Techmeme, as they add nuance and richness to the original discussion - they are not always linked to by the A listers (too small to notice methinks) but are typically people with knowledge, just without blog status. As I get more familiar with Techmeme I'm starting to see who does this constantly and add them to my RSS.

(iv) I don't know if this is a type of Resonator, but "Adulators" - people who will take a post (typically from an A-lister) and pimp it as The New Revelation really p*ss me off.