Creator of Techmeme, Gabe Rivera was interviewed by Jennifer Jones at PodTech and at one point she tells Gabe and condescends the listeners at the same time: “Keep in mind this isn’t a tech audience.” Gee Jennifer, what audience does PodTech have? Maybe it’s a sports audience? Perhaps Gabe is really Tom Cruise in disguise and the listeners are movie fans?

Discovered this interview embedded in a Deep Jive Interests blog post and while I don’t share Tony’s enthusiasm in the interview, I am doing the same below so readers can make their own judgement. Sounded over edited and kind of clumsy. Something Jennifer herself somewhat admits in the comments area: “I had to edit the interview quite heavily so that the production was good and it may have affected the interview. ”

After poking around Podtech to find Jennifer’s primary podcast page (pictured above) I see she has a marketing audience, ahhh. So marketing types wouldn’t be interested in the technology behind how Techmeme works? Of course they would! Marketing people are most likely to want to know the technology so they can do a better job marketing for themselves and clients. This makes Jennifer’s warning (?) to Gabe even more bizarre. Let’s look at some other people she interviewed recently: Andru Edwards from Gear Live (nope, gadgets aren’t techie), Dave Sifry from Technorati (nobody following that site is a techie), Andy Beal on SEO (of course search engine optimization isn’t very technical either).

(guffaw)

Unfortunately that odd comment (difficult, I know) sets the tone for most of the interview, including the part where Gabe said he was waiting for the Techmeme.com domain to become available. Back when I suggested alternate domain names for tech.memeorandum.com (October 2005) he didn’t seem to have a name in mind yet, instead saying:

But given the costs of changing a name, I may need to wait for something incredibly apt and memorable to come along. I’m setting the bar rather high.

Why hasn’t someone bought Techmeme?
I like the name Techmeme.com and think Gabe’s service is one of the more valuable internet properties in the sea of hashed and rehashed ideas out there. It would really compliment a site like Google News (hint, hint). I’m surprised Google nobody has made him an offer (has someone?) as opposed to funding yet another video sharing or social networking site. I’ve also warmed up to Techmeme competitor Megite.

Techmeme has come under attack from people who say it’s too “A-List” and Gabe has indicated here before that he receives complaints regularly about those who feel slighted that their sites aren’t getting linked. He added some juice to sites that link to Techmeme (hint), so there’s one clue to the enigma. There are certain types of tech stories that seem to show up more frequently than others and there are definitely influencers (ahem, Scoble) that seem favored by the algorithm . That’s just a guess, not anything scientific. I’m curious if Gabe would admit some authors have more juice than others based on experience and reliability. Parsing a blog like this one that is all over the map at times is no easy task and I’m impressed that the Techmeme bot seems to figure out which ones are appropriate and which are not.

Should also point out that Gabe was somewhat upset with alleged and apparently completely unfounded “attacks” regarding his back and forth with Bad Behavior Wordpress plugin Michael Hampton over conflicts with the Techmeme bot. I’m not sure if those two ever made peace (did you, Gabe? Michael?) but I invited Hampton via email to stop by and address his allegation.

The fact that Hampton never showed up validates Gabe’s assertion that the allegation was bogus. Gabe seems like a pretty standup guy to me and the allegation didn’t smell right. At the time I also offered Gabe an audio interview opportunity which he politely declined (yes, there is a seldom used Hmm interviews section here too). Maybe he’s warming up to audio interviews or maybe it was just because it was me asking and not Jennifer Jones? Can’t blame him there. She’s got a better radio voice than me.

If Gabe ever does grant me an audio interview I’ll make sure to point out that this is for a tech audience.

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