Shelley Powers has a post complaining about Techmeme and its secret formula algorithm for inclusion.

Specifically, she doesn’t like the fact that traffic resulting from inbound links to Techmeme plays a small role in getting a blog considered for inclusion.  Here‘s Gabe’s post about getting included on his memetrackers, in which he describes the inbound traffic effect.

I have a comment and then a question for Shelley.

First the comment.  What is so wrong with either the way Gabe has historically approached inclusion or the decision to give a little weight to inbound traffic?

I have talked a ton about Techmeme, and my love and occasional frustration with it.  For a while, my eligible posts would show up for weeks and then disappear for weeks, only to later reappear and restart the cycle.  Over time that problem has gone away, either due to a change in the secret formula or due to the fact that, in blog years, I have been blogging for a long time.  In a semi-perfect world, I’d like to see more of my posts picked up as lead stories (as opposed to in the discussion clusters).  I’d love to be included in the pool, with Scoble and some others, of blogs that get picked up semi-regularly as lead stories, not merely for the sake of seeing my posts up there, but because lead stories generally invoke a lot of conversation and conversation is my primary reason for blogging.  Having said that, however, I am grateful that my posts get picked up regularly as discussion links and occasionally as lead stories, so I’m not going to complain (although if Scoble would resubscribe to my blog, that might help a little- hint, hint).

Plus, I know that operating Techmeme is like drinking from a fire hydrant when it comes to filtering content and I’m sure every other blogger would like to tweak Techmeme’s secret formula in their favor.  You can’t please all the people all the time, and all that.

And isn’t inbound traffic one of the primary blogosphere currencies?  When someone links to you and you link back, that’s the blog equivalent of a handshake.  In other words, traffic is generally a shared goal and every other web site in the world gives at least token weight to inbound traffic- so why shouldn’t Gabe?  And if some hard working newish blogger gets picked up by Techmeme thanks to sending some traffic, that sounds to me like a net flattening.

Now the question for Shelley.  How should Techmeme work?  I understand what you think the problem is- that’s the easy part.  How would you fix it?

As I mentioned the other day, I was in San Francisco this week speaking at a (non-web related) conference.  I was staying at The Palace, which coincidentally happened to be the location of the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Summit.

I didn’t attend any of the presentations, but I did wander around the hallway and foyer outside the meeting rooms.  It looked like there were a few hundred people there- and a lot of socializing occurred in between and after the presentations.

I only had one O’Reilly employee ask me if I was an attendee, and that was when I inadvertently wandered too close to a meeting room where some big presentation must have been in progress.  Since I was staying at the hotel, there wasn’t much they could do to keep me from walking around, but I’m certain there were other non-attendees socializing and I didn’t see anyone get booted.

While I was wandering around, I kept wishing peoples’ names would appear above their heads in Second Life fashion, since I know a lot more people I blog around with by name than by face.  I’m sure I walked right by other people I know from the blogosphere, without even knowing it (those around the neck nametags are hard to read and have a habit of getting turned around).

But I did get to meet a bunch of people, including Robert Scoble, Stowe Boyd and Mike Arrington.  It was a truly serendipitous opportunity for me, as a guy from Texas, to meet in person some people I know a little via the blogosphere.

Best of all, I had a long and good conversation with Steve Gillmor.  We continued the conversation that began around this post.  I restated my apology in person and we talked about a lot of stuff- blogging, geography, podcasting, etc.  He explained his thoughts on links to me and, while I don’t know how to fix it, it’s hard to argue with his logic that there is a problem with the status quo.

Without belaboring the point, let me say two more things about these encounters.

First, while you can get to know someone reasonably well via blogging, email, etc., what you know is just the tip of the iceberg.  There is a lot more to a person than what he or she writes on a blog.  I was nosing around this issue in the comments to my earlier post I mentioned above, but meeting these guys in person, particularly Steve, really drove that point home.

Second, I’m starting to think that geography may not be as big of an obstacle to tech-related blogging as I have long thought.  I talked to a bunch of other people out there (many of whose names I don’t remember).  Quite a few of them of them (I’d say less than half, but close) knew about Newsome.Org- and some of them told me they subscribe to my feed.

Having said that, I think it’s still good to shake hands with someone and look them in the eye.  I’m really glad I had a chance to meet a few other bloggers.

I can’t speak for what went on inside the presentations, but the scene outside was pretty neat to experience.

I’m in San Francisco to give a speech at a (non-web) conference tomorrow.

I’m staying at The Palace, which, completely coincidentally, happens to be the site of the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Summit. That conference starts with a reception tonight and, based on a schedule I saw, ends on Thursday.

I’m going to hang around near the festivities for an hour or so out of curiosity, and then head over to the Tadich Grill for dinner.

It will be interesting to see if I recognize anyone.

Depending on when they kick me out, I may have more to report later.