TechMeme has long been a news aggregation site that many of us look to in order to keep up with what’s going on. I personally visit their page MANY times each day so that I can make sure I’m not missing out on something we should be reporting. TechMeme includes headlines from tech and social media blogs (or news sites) on a continual basis. However, they’ve made an announcement today that made most of us exclaim “OMG!” They are now going to include breaking news coming from Twitter along with the follow-up commentary for any given subject.

TechMeme head honcho Gabe Rivera believes that “a mix of blog posts, articles, and a smattering of tweets (plus other new forms of content), is the best way to distill what’s happening right now in technology.” I happen to have to agree with him. Stories happen on Twitter every day. News is broken there at times before they hit the blog circuit. Does that mean the site should stop posting links to blogs? Hell no – the full stories play out in blogs and on websites. But we get the news first (often) on Twitter. This is one hell of a smart move on Gabe’s part.

For as long as newsmakers have used Twitter, tweets have broken news stories. And yet for Techmeme, linking directly to tweets was never imperative – after all most newsworthy tweets are blogged within minutes, moreover with helpful context. But still it seemed as if something was missing in passing over tweets: we’d miss the first few minutes of certain developing stories as well as opportunities for including good commentary.

I’m sure by now you’re trying to figure out how your important Tweets could possibly end up on the site. It’s simple, really. Your missive has a much better chance of making the headlines if it contains @TechMeme or @TechMemeFH (or a direct link to techme.me), since those are automatically crawled all day long. In addition, you can continue to tip Gabe’s team off to something important you come across online by sending out a Tweet which includes “Tip @TechMeme” in it.

TechMeme Including Tweets as News

I haven’t heard any good technology podcasts by mimes lately. You know why? Because Gabe refuses to index mimed tech podcast feeds within TechMeme! Mr. Rivera must be afraid of mimes or something? He’s totally ignoring the mimetype community. Someone needs to develop a mimetracker and totally rule the market. I’m gesticulating wildly over here to fill space. I guess that would make my fingers… gesticles? Oh crap. I’m stuck in a TEXTAREA.

TechMeme vs. TechMime

Because I didn’t know how to effectively game the system, our TechMeme hacking efforts at Gnomedex fell on silent algorithms. I wrote about the new “Windows Live Writer” earlier, but I’m not showing up in TechMeme’s current list o’ Live links. Gabe might hate me for 0wning TechMeme in Google (currently #1). I haven’t visited TechMeme much lately, as I already subscribe to Arrington’s and Rubel’s blogs independently.

Memetracker Hacker

You won’t believe it – TechMeme has been hacked. I figured it was just a matter of time before something like this happened, and the Gnomedexers discovered it before anybody else did. If only Gabe was in the crowd, he might have stopped this from happening in the first place. Let’s just see how many people discover TechMeme (formerly Memeorandum) has been hacked this before Gabe does?

TechMeme Hacked!!!