Ah, Techmeme. The news aggregator bloggers love to love (or hate with equal measure). Two months ago I bemoaned how it wasn’t picking up what I perceived to be the most important news item (but eventually did).

Today I bemoan how long it takes to pick up news, period.

Techmeme does a great many things right, but I’ve found that news can take many, many, many hours for it to get picked up, especially if stuff is broken on the non-elite (my new word for the Super A-list) blogs.

Exhibit A, today, is the fact that Shyftr, the service that I have allegedly thrown under the bus, has rectified the item that I brayed so loudly about, which in turn, led to the leading news node on Techmeme for the weekend.

It would be nice if Techmeme picked this up in a timely fashion, but unfortunately, because it hasn’t been picked up by the blogs that are in its top 10 leaderboard, it won’t — at least for several more hours, perhaps, although the announcement was made on the official blog almost 6 hours ago.

Why is timeliness important? Only that on Techmeme the day of the week does make a difference. Come Monday morning, there is usually a deluge of stories, and, if even if they aren’t of any particular importance, they’ll usually wash out, in terms of volume, other stories, particularly if they aren’t linked to in any great degree.

If it never makes it up onto Techmeme it gives a bit of a skewed perspective of Shyftr, and an unfair one to anyone who only reads Techmeme (or its headlines). If it makes it so slowly that it gets washed out by other news that will also be unfortunate.

My hope is that since Louis and Mat (and Mashable) at the very least of spoken of it (also me), perhaps it will show up soon; but perhaps this is one reason why relying on algorithms entirely, while alluring, does need a fail safe. There are some important bits of news that are intrinsically worthwhile, and yet, because of the relative weaknesses (according to the algorithm) in who is linking and writing, news may not show up in time, if at all.

(Although, in truth, important news not showing up at all rarely happens)

Update: And sure enough … it has shown itself within minutes of this post going up (yay!)