I just hate the word “killer” in a headline. It means the author is
sensationalizing the potential outcome of a new product launch. FriendFeed was going to kill Twitter; Facebook was going to kill MySpace;
Google Base was going to kill Craigslist. None of these things
happened. Facebook’s a juggernaut. FriendFeed might be. And Google
Base is probably not. But new web services don’t often kill existing
web services, certainly not nearly as much as bloggers like
that they will.
So today’s headline from Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web, Google Blogsearch Relaunches as Techmeme Killer, immediately made me laugh. I almost hesitate to link to it but that’s not right if I mentioned it. I think Jason Kinkaid’s post on TechCrunch is more balanced and realistic. And Matt Cutts from Google takes pains to explain why Google Blog Search is not a Techmeme killer.
Here’s what I think. Blog post aggregators are great. I use them
every day, at least several times a day. I use them instead of a feed
reader. And I like to read at least three or four of them, a couple for
tech, one for politics, one for music, and so on and so forth.
In the tech sector, I like techmeme, hacker news, and Tim O’Reilly’s retweets on twitter.
Those three links sources really cover the bases for me. And behind
each of them is a voice. In Hacker News’ case, it’s Paul Graham and the
Y Combinator community. In Techmeme’s case, it’s Gabe. And in Tim’s
case, it’s Tim.
The new Google Blog Search
is very nice. It’s a big improvement to the old one. But it’s like a
lot of Google’s services. All algorithm and no “voice”. It may attract
a mainstream audience the way Google News has and that’s fine. But for
me, it’s not close to the value that I get from aggregators with an
angle. It’s like a mainstream newspaper versus a blog. On one you get
the news and on the other you get insight.
Anyway, enough Google bashing for now. I’m off to read my aggregators.
For more from Fred, visit his blog.