Is anyone paying attention?

Technorati just relaunched their home page to focus on Search and Discovery stating that sometimes people prefer to just browse and casually discover the top stories of the day. 

I could not agree more, which is why at SocialRank we have exclusively focused on creating the single most compelling discovery engine for the blogosphere.  If you have been to any of our sites such as www.MightyBlogger.com or www.ProductivityZen.com, then you know what I mean. 

Fundamentally, I wonder whether there is a new paradim on surfacing the “most interesting” stories that are coming up in the blogosphere and whether there is a flaw with the traditional measure of “attention.”

Here is my working hypothesis:

What people are paying attention to right now is NOT always the most interesting story

For example, just because a lot of people link to TechCrunch does not mean that TechCrunch has anything interesting to say.  TechCrunch just has so much reach that virtually any of their stories will get more links than even excellent posts from smaller blogs. 

At SocialRank, we have created a new algorithm that takes this into consideration and so we focus on “interestingness” as opposed to “popularity.”  We believe that over time as we tweak our algorithm we will be able to surface far more “interesting” stories, which will create a richer experience and allow people to discover posts that they would have otherwise missed. 

This blog post was inspired by the latest TechCrunch review of Technorati

5 Responses to “Is anyone paying attention?”

  1. Rajesh says
    December 5th, 2007 at 1:46 am

    Very interesting indeed. You are right, links are no measure AT ALL. A great blog by a top scientist will only get read by few, not changing the fact that the content it beyond cutting edge.

    Also, in my experience it is the lowest common denominator content that gets linked most.

    Cheers and all the best.

    R

  2. FeelingFlirty says
    December 5th, 2007 at 8:00 pm

    Thanks for the invitation to check out social rank. It’s a great idea you’ve got here and I hope it does good things for you and for bloggers.

  3. Pat Thornton says
    December 21st, 2007 at 5:16 pm

    I think Social Rank is a great idea, and I’ve enjoyed it so far, but I think there is something wrong with your tracking.

    According to your site, I have not updated my site for 5 days, even though I have 4 new posts in that time. It’s obviously not tracking my site correctly, which makes me wonder how many other sites it is not tracking properly either.

  4. Bob Glaza says
    December 29th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    if i have to pay too close attention, it will seem like work - but i really dig your finding the popular stories about specific topics. i’m going to play around with social rank - it ties into the idea of our listening to others being more important than listening to ourselves.

  5. Robert says
    March 1st, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    If I were interested in advertising one of my properties, like posties.us, would it be possible? PayPerPost has complained that the site is competition and we need another avenue to reach bloggers.

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