What in the World is this Guy Talking About?

Dennis Howlett is howling about how Tech Memeorandum is somehow hosing him and some other guys (literally if you buy his metaphor) by not somehow linking to enough stories “impacting business.” Then he proceeds to dump all over Scoble and Dave Winer over all sorts of perceived injustices.

He posts part of an email from Gabe Rivera, the creator of Memeorandum, that explains how Memeorandum’s algorithm selects what shows up on the page, and even says that Gabe manually added the allegedly excluded site to Memeorandum’s database. Yet somehow Memeorandum is not doing its job because their posts aren’t showing up.

I love Memeorandum. I read it daily. I’m no A-Lister, but my posts show up there regularly. It’s one of the very few places in the Blogosphere where new voices have a chance to be heard.

It’s not perfect. As I have mentioned before, sometimes my posts disappear there for days at a time only (so far at least) to reappear. I wrote Gabe about it a few weeks ago, and I got a similar response to the one posted by Dennis. Sure, I’d love to be assured that all of my applicable posts will show up on the Memeorandum page immediately, but that’s not how it was designed and that’s not the way it works. What we have is still way better than watching the pigs fly by our window while we wait for that link from Om or Mike.

Gabe was brilliant in several ways by leaving the selection process to the algorithm. First, it levels the playing field a little. You still need links, which a lot of the A-Listers won’t give- or at least won’t give to me. But that’s not Gabe’s fault. Additionally, it provides for a good answer when I, Dennis and others make inquiries.

Now about that business stuff. Right now there are 17 main stories on the Memeorandum page. All but 5 of them definitely concern businesses more than the consumer and the other 5 at have at least some relevance for business. Granted, Memeorandum’s not the online edition of the Wall Street Journal (ZZZZZ…), but that’s why so many people like it.

As everyone knows, I think the Blogosphere is somewhat of a closed society. But if we want to start pointing fingers about why that is, Memeorandum is not the place to start.