I don't feel a need to reinvent the web inside of FF. However it is part of what I do, in the same way Twitter is. I like FF better, but only marginally better. It's very far from the ideal. None of these guys have managed to combine all the elements the way plain old HTML does it so well. It's nice in some ways but a big step backward in others. - Dave Winer

oh don't you worry the "BigCos" and slooow media will always end up being displaced; it's a law of nature, soon to be documented and displaced - Billy Shipp via twhirl

Yeah. It's a big old loop we're in. And watch for the moments when new products don't get any air. That means the routearound is just about to begin. - Dave Winer

BTW its weird but Techmeme is down now. What a day! - Dave Winer

reinventing if needed is fine but to get a new look I guess, it's like starting over again a little bit. - Jack

Dave: I disagree to a point. If you look at Techmeme stories from my blog in May and June alone, you can see stories on Loud3r, Feedly, Disqus, Sezwho, FFToGo, and Shyftr, for example. It could be that Techmeme is accurately monitoring the most discussed blogs, and that the vast majority of these blogs are talking less about new products. Link: http://tinyurl.com/4nscbe - Louis Gray

Dave, I don't disagree, but having said that I don't believe its Technemes fault, it is designed to follow the peak noise and ultimately thats around the big players. What we need is a techmeme like service that blocks techcrunch and any mention of a defined list of companies such as google, facebook etc so we can cut through the noise - Duncan Riley via fftogo

Nah, I think the blogosphere and devices like Twitter and FriendFeed show me cool things all the time. When you rely on one aggregator/editor for information... things you are interested in slip through. If you leave it up to crowdsourcing, you see what you want. - Andrew Ruess

Louis -- that's kind of the point -- those products didn't launch well, and with no slight to you -- I haven't heard of them because I depend on TechMeme to tell me what's important in the tech world. TechMeme does what it does well, but it has some real limits and the industry has shaped around those limits, just as the industry shaped around the limits of the press in the pre-Internet era and during the browser and Java wars in the 90s. - Dave Winer

Dave, what are you thinking about? - feedlyqa

I think there needs to be a website where people can list the new products and services, that way its very easy to find out and support new services like SocialBrowse and A.viary that I would have never found if it wasn't for the invites friendfeed channel - Chacha

Feedly, generate a daily RSS feed (archived) of the user's posts. Here's an example. http://twitter.scripting.com/d... - Dave Winer

are you thinking of a parallel twitter system based on RSS and an associated XXXmeme? - feedlyqa

Dave, I guess the answer is on your website http://www.scripting.com/ (note: permalinks on the website seem to be broken). how do you envision people creating http://twitter.scripting.com/d...? SwitchAbit? Friendfeed? (or the point is that you do not care?) - feedlyqa

@Chacha i made a new product/software category @ http://www.socialmedian.com/ try *solacetech* as an invite code and tell me if that's what you had in mind - Anthony Farrior

I would find it interesting to hear less breaking news and new startups. Instead more analytics on the guys that are doing it right. Why are they successful? Nine out of 10 new startups don't seem to be launching something that addresses an actual need, instead they launch a technology. We have enough technology already, so that fails. And providing us with next gen social ad business models ain't going to work either ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

I really liked Fred Wilson's suggestion to make a TechMeme that was for individual bloggers only. No branded blogs like TechCrunch, Engadget, VentureBeat... just Scripting, AVC, Scoble, etc. This would cast a much more individual net, which I think would really increase diversity. PeopleMeme - Jason Calacanis

Jason, a good idea:-) BTW TechMeme could be improved vastly if it could ignore 3 types of post: 1) any posts that say "Breaking News" 2) posts that copy the exact content of another post and add 1-2 lines to them (echo echo) 3) Anything, and I mean anything that discusses the performance of Twitter at this moment. Removing any of those would make TechMeme probably 100% more interesting and diverse already. Is Gabe listening? ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

Alexander, Gabe always listens. He's one of the best I've seen for monitoring his service online. He's out of town until July 8th, so may be checking things less. - Louis Gray

Well they sound like easy fixes, so I hope he has the time to implement them. Come to think of it, it would be great if each of us can have it's own TechMeme algorithm ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

BTW Louis, it seems YOU are always listening too ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

Maybe the route-around is to read Louis Gray. - Jason Kaneshiro

I have been reading TechMeme less and less lately. I guess that means it's about to go mainstream! :-) - Robert Scoble

My route-around is to read Louis Gray. That's for sure. But he'll be slowed down by two new babies. But I have a lot to say on this topic. The thing is that the early adopters are way ahead of most of the world and the rest of the world needs to catch up before we can see a ton of new stuff again that'll be successful. In the area of work, for instance, on the Office 2.0 database there are more than 800 services. How many of them have any of us tried? I bet a VERY SMALL percentage. - Robert Scoble

Can't slow me down. My Thursday/Friday gap was as we were at the hospital, fattening up Sarah, but my bet is that's a blip. Two new services, never blogged about by anyone ever on Techmeme, hit the blog today. :-) - Louis Gray

I have to disagree. Been seeing more new sources as relatively unknown sources appearing on Techmeme all the time (possibly not this past week?) ... but I read Louis ... and sometimes Robert too :) - Charlie Anzman

I hope Sarah gets fat enough to release louis from fear so he can help us again :-) - Francine Hardaway via twhirl

dont forget http://emilychang.com/go/ehub ! all new products there - Marshall Kirkpatrick via fftogo

Yep, I'm listening, and appreciate the ideas. But I'm in disagreement with many people here. I can't give alot of weight to requests for coverage of new products from people who provide coverage of new products (or the products themself). And I can't give undue weight to requests for more personal blogs from personal bloggers. These suggestions are somewhat helpful, but don't speak for the vast majority of Techmeme's readers, who don't use FriendFeed or even leave comments on blogs. So why does Techmeme overlook alot of new products? Maybe there's new product fatigue. Though product launches are accelerating, people are sensing that most don't hold a lot of promise for disruption or significant growth. I'm certainly not the first to observe this. - Gabe Rivera

It would be interesting to see if someone were to calculate a success/fail ratio on these new products AND relate that to the amount of hype created in some breaking news blogs. I could tell you the outcome, no correlation at all. You either execute right or you don't. The power of the "Hype Blog" review isn't sustainable or accessible for users beyond the early adopters. - Alexander van Elsas

maybe it's just me, but i think there's a "fatigue bar" that keeps going up to get people excited about new products. i think it's more interesting to talk more about things that appear to be getting some traction than any smart little thing that releases. traction > launching - Charles Hudson

I get paid to write about start-ups, but usually it's those that raise funding, make a splash or do something new. We can read about big company news almost anywhere. I'm with Charles, though. Not every start-up is worth the virtual ink. How do you strike a balance? That would be up to Gabe's secret sauce. - Dan Kaplan

I like what Charles said. Very often, where there's traction, there's a story. What happened? Why is this catching on? What made the difference? What kind of people are using it? How is it spreading? Etc., etc. - Gabe Rivera

More information = more usability. Hope to see some new developing things on Techmeme soon. - Mark Frost

I agree in part with Gabe, but disagree too. TechMeme attracted me because it was different than what was on Google News. Now it's getting to be big-city news and isn't as interesting as hanging out in FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble

Finding all most new products worth trying via twitter/friendfeed (techmeme new product launches usually = techcrunch = PR relationship with MikeA = not enough reason to give a crap pour moi ) - leigh himel

re: a 'Techmeme' that is 'personal' -- A recent blog post from Nick Bradbury explains how the "popular topics" feature on FeedDemon is sort of like a meme-tracker limited to those blogs to which one subscribes ( http://urlzen.com/6u ). Obviously, this is not a Techmeme replacement, merely an attempt to add another means to view the conversation flow. - Rex Hammock

@oliverg True, I consider myself hyperconnected and still have issues with FF. But if Twitter won't get it right soon... - Nils Geylen

Nils, since I have been on Friendfeed, my Twitter usage has drastically dropped to the point where I hardly use it anymore. The down time certainly has not helped. - Mike Fruchter

Ditto to the 100th power Mike - Marco

I've been looking for workarounds to some of FFs less interesting features. "Hide items like this" sure helps for Adium status updates etc. - Nils Geylen

Nils, Very interesting take on the experiment so far. It has given me some food for thought. On your blog you mention my negatives about comments being exported from G Reader into the room. That to me is a positive, the problem is notes pulled from G Reader are showing me as the person who left the comment, rather then the person who noted it and shared it. This bug could have some serious consequences. - Mike Fruchter

I still find the 140 char limit on twitter liberating. When I can type as much as I want on FF sometimes I panic. - Nate Koechley

Kenichi Matsumoto - I get this error when trying to add your feed. The given URL does not appear to be a Google Reader shared items URL - Mike Fruchter

Nick, Yuvi, Mike & Sarah, feeds added. Thanks! - Mike Fruchter

Kenichi, disregard that message. I grabbed the url off your feed. Thanks - Mike Fruchter

I thank you, Mike! I could have subscribed to some valuable shared feeds out of the room :) - Kenichi Matsumoto

Just wondering - do you add everyone, or is there a "bar" you have to be over? - Yuvi

Yuvi for this experiment, any Freindfeeder with a Google Reader shared account can participate. - Mike Fruchter

Andy, Jason, Erin, Thanks for participating. Feeds have been added. - Mike Fruchter