If you are an event promoter and want to include your event at no cost provided that your event meets the criteria of being an earnings announcement or scheduled project launch, you can send details to events@techmeme.com.

Rivera wrote the following on his Tumblr blog:

Since all “aggregators” are now tainted by association, I’m wondering if we should start using a different term to describe what we do at Techmeme. Something more specific, like “headline aggregator”? Or “link curator”? Meanwhile, can we all just call the rewriters “rewriters”? Aggregation is not the essence of what they do.

The problem is that Techmeme should not be compared to Huffington Post whatsoever. The Huffington Post has a massive team of editors, both paid and voluntary. Techmeme has a computer algorithm that automatically finds and links to the most interesting technology news, with limited human intervening. The manner that Techmeme finds the top tech news is similar to how Google News finds their content.

I agree with Rivera that Techmeme should not be looked upon as an “aggregator.” Google News is also described as a website that aggregates headlines. The Huffington Post should not be called an “aggregator” since they do not do what Techmeme or Google News does. They should be called a “content farm” that is similar to what eHow.com and other Demand Media properties do.

Techmeme simply links to interesting news articles without rewriting the content in their own words.

The Huffington Post takes content from others, either rewrites it slightly or copies and pastes the content and puts a small link at the bottom linking to the original source.

These are two different types of websites and should not be described as similar.

[Gabe Rivera Blog]

[Techmeme News]

Search wasn’t always the highest priority for Techmeme.  Becoming a mainstream, newsworthy site was the highest priority.  But now that search is available, here is a list of common uses.

For companies that aggregate data like Crunchbase, search queries can be used to embed data relating to specific keywords.  For example, Crunchbase lists aggregated Techmeme data for the companies in their database.  Click the thumbnail below to see a sample of how the data is used:

Techmeme Search shows headlines that appeared on the homepage in a reverse chronological.  Headlines that appear in discussion are excluded.  Rivera pointed out that search services like Ask Blog Search, Google News, and Topix of returning everything that they have indexed.  This is what makes Techmeme search unique.  It only returns noteworthy results, not exhaustive data.

While there is a search box at the top of the Techmeme homepage, a more barebones search is available at techmeme.com/search.  Techmeme visitors can filter results based on data in the title only or within the summary text of individual stories.

Omer Horvitz, Techmeme’s first hire designed the search.

Review of New Techmeme Feature:
For media researchers such as myself that depends heavily on Techmeme, it is important for me to be able to filter out information about the companies that I am interested in.  Since Techmeme has been capturing the best technology news stories over the last 3 years, this is the best way to get that information at a rapid pace.

The functionality is simple, yet effective.  After entering search keyword(s), navigating around the site is simple enough.  There are numbers at the bottom that indicate how far back or forward you want to find your results based on the time stories appeared on the homepage.

I highly recommend those that haven’t used Techmeme before to get into it now.  Especially now that search has been added.

Firehose accounts for related discussion stories to the main headlines.  This is beneficial for the publishers that get in late, but can be overwhelming for the reader.

Techmeme introduced this feature for all their sites: Techmeme, WeSmirch (celebrity), ballbug (baseball–How about that Roger Clemens?), and memeorandum (political). 

Techmeme also created a Twitter account where top headlines will be added.  The Techmeme Firehose RSS feed is available at: http://www.techmeme.com/firehose.xml.

[Information Source: Somewhat Frank]

Users on Facebook are encouraged to write what they were doing in status messages just like Twitter.  But every message had to start with “[your first name] is” and then a custom message.  But no longer will that “is” be there according to Wired and AllFacebook.

So now instead of messages like “Amit is wondering if Bill Gates will poke him back on Facebook” can be replaced by “Amit wants Bill Gates to poke him back on Facebook.”  I think that after Facebook removes it, users will wonder “what really was the point of that is being mandatory.”  And just for the record, I agree with Arrington when I say that because this is a top story on Techmeme, the Blogosphere really does need a vacation.

My biggest criticism of Techmeme is that content that is aggregated on the homepage is chosen manually by a panel of technology experts.  But manually content selection seems to many Web 2.0 sites out there such as Digg, Techmeme, Reddit, etc.  Digg and Reddit homepages are basically controlled by the most active users on the site.  To my understanding, stories on Techmeme is selected by unnamed sources.

All things considered, Techmeme representatives actually do a really good job at recognizing what discussions are worthwhile.  I hope to see Pulse 2.0 grow up on this list eventually even if it takes writing several posts per day everyday for years.  Things happen on the Internet at a rapid pace everyday.  And Techmeme captures that information and reports it right away.  This is why I have Techmeme on my Netvibes.

Techmeme helps sites like Pulse 2.0, TechCrunch, GigaOm, Engadget, etc. running.  Those at the top have something to be proud off and those at the bottom have something to aspire to.  Game on.