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!)

I was wondering last night, as I was randomly thinking about new media things (as I am wont to do on occasion) that it was odd that in the kerfuffle around Shyftr that the actual Shyftr blog hadn’t mentioned anything about it.

{total aside: isn’t it odd that a service built around hosting conversation has *disabled* it on their own blog? — yes, comments are disabled.  EDIT: actually, according to Matt from Shyfter, they created their own blogging engine and never wrote a comments system.  The irony, however, still remains. :)}

Odd because in new media time (if we can narcissistically adopt a new speeded up time frame), waiting the weekend for things to develop I have found only tends to make things worse.  People start wondering why the wait, and then the conversation steers towards *that* and less towards the original reason why the conversation started in the first place.

Yeah, I’m lookin at you Steve Rubel and Richard Edelman.  This blogger hasn’t forgotten. :)

Long preamble, but it looks like the guys behind Shyftr have moved away from grabbing whole posts from RSS feeds to just the title.  In their own words:

With that in mind, we have decided to revise the format around our discussions. We will only display the title, author, and date of an item where discussions occur outside of the reader. We deeply respect content publishers, and it is not our intention to cause unease.

What Shyftr has done now is to effectively become a social network *around* discussions of particular topics, rather than implicitly diverting 100% of the attention away form the original post.  I think this is a good thing, although I would have been just as happy if they had grabbed the first 100-200 words as well as a “summary”.

This move obviates my own qualms against Shyftr, which many bloggers seemed to have mistaken for qualms against controlling conversations, which is something I described that I never wanted to do (and tried to come up with a “funny” neologism, “hypo-stupid”, for bloggers who think they can do this).

Conversations happen everywhere, and we can’t really control that.  We can invent tools that can keep track of things, and we can *hope* that wherever the conversation goes, people remember who said what, and attribute appropriately.

If the latter happens faithfully, then I think its a bygone conclusion that “conversations will happen off-blog and bloggers have to suck it up“, because in truth, the karma will flow back to them, if not in terms of trackbacks, but in reputation, good will, and the knowledge that “yes — this blogger knows a few things worth a damn.”

And when that happens not only will bloggers suck it up, but will be happy to do so (both suck and blow?) in this kind of system that rewards everyone — perhaps not in the metric they initially envisioned — somewhat equitably.

To flog this blue metaphor a little more, in this system of sucking and blowing, it will ultimately be up to the blogger to maximize their reputation, if such is any goal of theirs, to their gain.  Traffic may not be a prize that is a worthwhile goal, but perhaps meeting new people, creating new personal nodes on your network *is*.

And that, arguably, is perhaps a better and more wortwhile end point for many bloggers.

(if you want to be pragmatic about it — yes, ultimately this leads to more links, more notice, more jobs, more opportunities, and really, just about more of everything).

tip://the inimitable mathew ingram

Update: Upon closer inspection, full feeds are still available when you use Shyftr as a private feed reader, which is perfectly fine to me.

Well, I can already tell what the headlining post this weekend is going to be on Techmeme (or bitchmeme, a la MG), and its going to probably revolve around Shyftr, a relatively new service in the RSS aggregating category (and lo, since I started writing, it has begun!)

Or, should I say “scraping” category?

No, you’re right — that’s not fair. I know Shyftr has its fans (like Louis Gray, who I respect immensely and is an awesome blogger in his own right)Here’s the cribs notes version as I see them: Shyftr is a new social network that revolves around sharing RSS feeds. Now, what’s so harmless about that, you might add? Surely we have social networks involving all kinds of niches, and aren’t feeds meant to be shared?

Well, there’s sharing, as in “hey, look at this new feed, you should check it out” — and there’s sharing, also known as, “I’m going to scrape and republish a blogger’s an entire feed, so that many people can check it out”.

And in that respect, Shyftr is a lot like Toluu, which allows people to publicly share feeds as well, although the social network aspect of Shyftr is absent (i.e you cannot comment on particular feeds or stories).

Let me be clear: I am making no value judgements against its creators or against its original intent (which may have been to let people have fun in sharing their feeds).

However, in my mind, when a service cannot exist *without* republishing others content in its entirety, and directly profits from that republishing without the original consent of the author, there’s something that isn’t right.

What do I mean by “profit” when none of these services are *actually* making a profit? Well, I am using the term loosely, in that they are deriving the present benefit of *existing*, and the real future benefit of earnings around republishing someone else’s content.

Now the fact that “conversations” are also happening above, around, and beyond the original blogs is interesting, but ultimately a foot note in this conversation; services like Friendfeed also aggregate conversations around blogging topics, but unlike Shyftr and Toluu, don’t host the *entire* feed.

So where am I drawing the line that Shyftr crosses?

Well, I accept the idea that conversations are going to be fractured, and that I don’t *own* them. I would *like* to host them on this blog, but I do realize that conversations have a life of their own (and run wild and free wherever they like) and exist wherever they like because their real owners are those folks who are having them. I only have the privilege of starting them, and participating in them wherever they are.

To bully and force them into being in a certain place (i.e. here) would be profoundly myopic, and as a blogger (i.e. someone who is supposed to understand and navigate these kinds of new media landmines) — heck, I don’t even know the right word. Some combination of “stupid” and “hypocritical”, like a doctor not renewing his own prescriptions for blood pressure medication, a teacher not doing his or her own homework.

(”hypo-stupid?”)

Oh wait, someone’s already demonstrated this recently.

Anyway, its not the conversations being hosted somewhere else that bothers me, its that there are a new crop of services which would not otherwise exist without republishing someone else’s content without the original author’s explicit permission. Well, lots of people’s content. And you can dress it up and all kinds of clothing and all kinds of nifty wrappers, but ultimately that’s what this is about.

And to me, that’s what the line is, and in my mind services like Shyftr (wittingly or unwittingly) cross it.

Now is the problem with RSS feeds? That we don’t understand the explicit rights that are associated with it? Perhaps. This isn’t a new conversation after all (here’s a link from Scoble circa 2005), and let’s be real clear: this topic is probably as old as RSS feeds itself.

I’m no copyright guru, and I don’t pretend to know all the details of what that entails, but what I do know is this: unless and until there is a general consensus about what the rights around RSS feeds are (because my bias is that there is absolutely no implied rights to reproduce carte blanche), I think there is a moral and ethical obligation to obtain content from the content owners about reproducing feeds in their entirety, particularly if its going to be used as part of public service which a) has or will generate profits from a service which is based on those feeds and therefore is a b) service which cannot exist without reproducing (i.e. “copying”) those feeds.

Until they do, they’re a lot like another kind of site or blog which fits that kind of definition.

Content scraper.

{an ugly word, I know}

Update: Eric Berlin, who’s initial Tweets prompted this post chimes in and, amongst other cogent arguments, echoes Mat Ingram’s sentiments: building a business around someone the full reproduction of other’s content doesn’t seem right.