Revealed: Why Techmeme links to them instead of you!
Over time, nearly every major tech news publisher has asked us a variant of “Why do you always post them and not us?” or “Why did you pick them over us for that story when we posted first?” So it's probably time to address this issue in a general way.
Context & Ripple Effects
Techmeme's selection choices have been a running sore in the tech blogosphere since at least 2007, when commentary flagged the unusually high concentration of links on its Leaderboard as self-reinforcing and Jason Calacanis weighed in with an official-word defense of the aggregator. Weekend disputes among bloggers over who got covered were common enough by 2008 to earn their own nickname.
What changes with this post is posture: rather than answering publishers one at a time, Techmeme is addressing the recurring "why them and not us" complaint in general terms — notable because in January 2011 it had already widened its inputs by letting tweets become headlines or discussion items, making its selection logic more consequential, not less.
First-order effects
- Publishers who have lobbied Techmeme privately now get a public statement of how link choices are made, turning an opaque editorial gate into something they can argue against on the record.
Second-order effects
- Outlets competing for the same referral traffic will tune headline wording and posting timing toward whatever criteria Techmeme discloses, reinforcing the very concentration on its Leaderboard that critics flagged back in 2007.
Third-order effects
- If aggregators become the de facto distribution layer for tech news, their selection rules function as industry gatekeeping — and pressure for intermediaries to explain those rules publicly becomes a standing expectation rather than a one-off concession.
The trend: Tech news distribution is consolidating around curated aggregators whose selection criteria, once disclosed, become the rules every publisher optimizes against.