End of Techmeme
Like throwing raw meat in a sea of sharks, the stats are in; techmeme does not drive as much traffic as Digg, reddit, stumbled upon, or other web 2.0 news sharing or aggregation sites. So while techmeme is techy cool, with it audience of people, the news is slowly spreading, being on techmeme is a milestone, not a way to drive gobs of traffic to your web site.
We have been on techmeme twice now, and it has driven less than 1% of all traffic to the web site. We may be user generated content web 2.0 heaven, but we are still increasingly reliant on web 1.0 search engines, and the very few top social networking sites. The top referrers to the web site, Google, yahoo, msn, live, and direct, long before we get to Digg, Slashdot, or other sites that tend to send spiky traffic.
Sorry folks, to get traffic, you still have to rely on search engines, you still have to write about what people want to read about, and you are going to have to deal with the realities. Digg folks spend maybe 30 seconds on your site, Propeller folks spend a minute (what does that say about the user population at Digg verses Propeller?), and Google folks spend a minute and a half on the site.
In the mean time, the sharks are circling techmeme this morning, from ValleyWag, to Rough Type to Cnet.
As a group of bloggers, thinkers and leaders in the industry, knowing who is coming and how much time they spend on site is important. Knowing where they come from is equally as important as well in terms of garnering sponsorships. Techmeme is not irrelevant, but in a world of technology ADHD, and exceedingly short attention spans, traffic is ephemeral and subject to the whimsy of the mob.
While systems like Digg, Propeller, Reddit, Techmeme and others attempt to impose order on chaos. We seek the wisdom of the crowd, but we keep on tripping over the anger of the mob. Digg has its own problems, so does Reddit, techmeme, Technorati, and everyone else. Everyone trying to make money by getting “eyeballs” and “page views” selling the “great idea” while the mob chases each passing fancy.
Techmeme is not the mob, it is the quality folks who will spend a couple of minutes on the site. We measure in minutes (sorry, 30 seconds is not enough time to read an article, we don’t care how many speed reading classes Digg users seem to have taken), we determine quality readers in minutes. Techmeme and other sites deliver quality traffic, which we like, being dugg is like having a drive by, you get a lot of attention for a moment, then everyone moves on, nothing to see here.
We will still take techmeme traffic over Digg traffic any day of the week.
[…] in relationship to where people find news, and then blog about what is happening in the news. While techmeme is not the only source, it is quickly becoming the authoritative source of information for people […]