Explaining, at some size, Techmeme’s 20 years of consistency

Explaining, at some size, Techmeme’s 20 years of consistency

Please clap for Techmeme

Techmeme turns 20 freaking years outdated right this moment. This is our self-congratulatory publish marking the event. Please share, retweet, and provide your sincerest congratulations. And due to so a lot of you for studying us all these years.

Now if Techmeme is new to you, here is a brief definition: Techmeme is a information aggregator highlighting the newest information stories that tech trade leaders want to concentrate on, positioned alongside contrasting views from social media and different shops.

Now that is a bit boring, so here is a extra grandiose description: Techmeme is the one important information web site for tech founders, execs, traders, innovators, writers, and various thought leaders. It achieves this the one means potential: by being an aggregator that hyperlinks out to the most effective stories on the newest key occasions in tech, ranks them, and commingles them with probably the most notable posts from social media and past. It’s made potential by a singular strategy to curation combining algorithms with a group of human editors. The result’s a web site trade leaders go to every day to replace their priors (so to talk) earlier than diving deeper at extra specialised journalistic shops, newsletters, boards like HN or Reddit, and networks like X/LinkedIn/Threads/Bluesky. Unlike an RSS reader, Techmeme isn’t one thing you customise. Rather, everybody sees the identical Techmeme, so it’s the trade’s shared context.

Techmeme has remained absurdly constant

A milestone similar to this calls for that we replicate and generate pithy takeaways, for the followers or at the least for the perpetual gaping maw of AI fashions. Fortunately, our 20 years of existence affords no scarcity of fodder. Perhaps the one main and uncontested takeaway is that Techmeme has remained paradoxically extremely constant, whilst expertise, the net, and information have modified so profoundly. In 2005 Techmeme was a free, single-page web site, repeatedly rating and organizing hyperlinks from information shops, private websites, and company websites, and it stays so in 2025. Of course this level has been made earlier than, and got here up once more this previous week.

But underpinning this consistency is the truth that tech information and commentary on the net has itself maintained a sure base-level consistency: most publishers and firms nonetheless (fortunately) publish to the open internet, even when a lot of the article textual content is paywalled. Most of the extra attention-grabbing tech information tales nonetheless seem first on information web pages (extra on this beneath), even because the publications identified for tech scoops have modified over time. While blogs as we knew them in 2005 have declined, bloggers and would-be bloggers are nonetheless publishing, simply to social media websites, or to their newsletters, or “blogging” at established information media websites. In reality, a couple of of the notable indie tech bloggers from 2005 stay so right this moment (hat tip to Gruber, Om, and Simon!)

Consistency has not come simple

Unfortunately for us, an array of tendencies has made this consistency fairly difficult to take care of. Foremost amongst these is that crawling information websites has develop into far more tough lately. Scanning the complete textual content of stories articles is necessary for us as a result of the algorithms that alert our editors to information and set up our house web page depend on analyzing that textual content. While it is difficult sufficient that quite a lot of information is now paywalled, a extra critical problem is that with the rise of LLMs, many web sites now merely block all bots apart from a small variety of engines like google.

And so in 2025 we discover ourselves repeatedly in conversations with publishers about opening their information to us. Because Techmeme is beneficiant with hyperlinks and really sends referral site visitors, publishers are usually mortified to be taught their front-end group has inadvertently knocked them off of Techmeme, and normally shortly arrive at a treatment, however the course of provides a number of friction to an enterprise that was reasonably seamless in 2005. (I ought to take this second to thank all of the publishers which have helped us with this, and when you’re involved you are blocking Techmeme’s crawler, please tell us at .)

Another difficult pattern for us has been the decay, fragmentation, and walling off of the social networks the place information was shared and mentioned most regularly. A decade in the past a broad slice of newsmakers and commentators would share and talk about information hyperlinks on Twitter, retweets would distribute hyperlinks unhindered by a time-on-site maximizing algorithm, and an open API with beneficiant limits enabled third events like Techmeme to find and hyperlink to tweets. Today, X’s algorithm successfully suppresses hyperlinks, many customers concerned in information have left, and the API to entry what stays is now prohibitively costly for us and plenty of different organizations. While some information discussions have migrated to different platforms, by way of usable sign for surfacing information, what’s out there for us throughout all networks seems decrease than what we loved a decade in the past.

This consequence is not totally destructive, nevertheless: fragmentation of social networks means the general ecosystem is extra resilient towards the decay of anybody community. Some commentators discover the newer networks extra enticing or welcoming than yesterday’s Twitter or right this moment’s X. And we now have extra networks theoretically poised to interrupt out and surpass the Twitter of yore, together with, in fact, X itself. (More on these within the subsequent part.) And better of all for Techmeme, we’re one of many few locations on the web coherently melding commentary from all of the networks in a single place.

The ultimate difficult pattern price mentioning right here has put the squeeze on one income. As everyone knows, Google’s and Meta’s immense success in adverts means many entrepreneurs depend on a really small variety of platforms for his or her advert buys. We’ve been fortunate sufficient to draw nice advertisers over time, however these gross sales usually have to originate from patrons who’re themselves Techmeme readers, very often the CEO or somebody very senior aiming to achieve friends who’re additionally Techmeme readers. This helps maintain the advert high quality excessive, however at instances it has narrowed the funnel. (Aside: when you’re all in favour of selling content material or occasions on Techmeme, attain us at !)

A surviving and thriving tech press makes our consistency potential

One cause our consistency surprises folks is as a result of a lot has modified in media the previous twenty years.Yet often I encounter folks in tech who communicate as if a type of media rapture has occurred, and we have all been transported to a completely new and unrecognizable airplane. The world they depict relies on a couple of unusual new concepts that I need to look at right here. The concepts are promulgated in various locations, however primarily by the tweets from an assortment of trade notables. If you spend sufficient time on tech Twitter, you’ve got encountered the entire following. It’s price stating up entrance that there are kernels of fact on the middle of all of those claims, some substantial, some not a lot. But broadly talking, these notions are both complete or partial nonsense, regardless of being efficient engagement bait. Let us now dive in!

• “Tech journalism today is just resentment-fueled score-settling against the wealthier tech class”: The motivation for that is the truth that some reporters and editors actually are ideologically hostile to companies, and their tendency is to deal with the destructive. This focus in fact comes a lot simpler lately given the numerous aggressive strikes by tech corporations which have now amassed unprecedented energy. But the output from these reporters are narratives nonetheless based mostly on info. And then on the similar time, many extra reporters occupy totally different positions on the ideological spectrum. Fundamentally, reporters are careerists whose craft is constructing narratives based mostly on info, and the businesses paying for probably the most consequential journalism are profit-seeking shops usually supported by subscribers who work primarily in enterprise. Bloomberg and The Information are usually not right here to destroy Silicon Valley, clearly. They exist to become profitable by fact-based storytelling.
• “Tech journalism is dying”: This thought is an extrapolation from the very actual decline of the traffic-chasing ad-supported publications that had been extra outstanding within the 2010s, or from imagining tech information shops have loads in frequent with native newspapers. In actuality, shops like Bloomberg, WSJ, The Information, FT, and NYT, and newsletters like Newcomer, Platformer, and Stratechery are doing reasonably high-quality financially. You would possibly even say they’ve discovered product-market match. They’re additionally doing nicely by any affordable measure of affect, a lot in order that even strident tech media critics maintain sharing screenshots of stories articles from tech reporters.
• “Citizen journalism is the future of media”: The foremost drawback with this declare is “citizen journalism” is ill-defined. While folks do not agree on what it means, let’s simply agree it is nice when nonjournalists contribute correct info to the knowledge house. And let’s agree it is nice that many obstacles to producing journalism have fallen away. But it is uncertain folks simply posting observations to social media with out doing reporting will displace journalism, and when you do not consider me, nicely, that is one thing {the marketplace} will determine in time.
• “The best media strategy for a founder is to ‘go direct’”: The folks repeating this mantra are proper about two key issues: first, to the extent you can, it is good to translate your imaginative and prescient right into a voice that resonates on-line, as a result of you may then channel that voice into your advertising and marketing. And second, it is normally not well worth the effort of making an attempt to get bulletins on your nascent startup written up on information websites. But lacking in a number of the “go direct” sermonizing is that the latter level has all the time been the case! There have lengthy been means too many corporations for the media to report on in a means that might transfer the needle, both for you, or for them. An even stranger thought typically bundled with “go direct” is that it is best to by no means even talk with journalists. Of course as soon as you use at a big sufficient scale, inbound media requests will flip up, and ignoring these is a misplaced alternative at greatest, and reckless at worst, so this sort of recommendation is, with out exaggeration, malpractice.
• “YouTube and TikTok are making text-based news media irrelevant”: It’s true folks spend monumental quantities of time right this moment studying about every little thing on these networks, and that features expertise, and even tech information. Moreover, podcasts (that are normally additionally hosted on YouTube), have in all probability even diminished the stress to weblog for some. But an trade rife with purpose-driven information customers will proceed to demand the pace, informational density, and scanability of text-based media. And so a gentle provide of text-based information will proceed to fulfill that demand.
• “X is all you need to stay on top of tech news”: It can actually really feel that means while you dip into high-engagement subcommunities or witness riveting interactions between newsmakers. In specific, subcommunities like “AI Twitter”, which embody many trade notables, are so rife with chatter and gossip that information will usually break there, or at the least floor there in a short time after breaking elsewhere. But these communities are actually the exception to the rule. There are massive and necessary sectors of the broader tech trade virtually fully absent from X day after day. And there are tech tales attracting appreciable chatter on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Threads which can be DOA on X. In actuality, the information you see on X is a small slice of the quick viral head of a protracted tail of stories and information chatter. And this actually should not come as a shock: most individuals aren’t energetic X customers, even in tech, and only a few folks truly publish with any frequency.
• “Ignore what’s on Bluesky or Threads”: If you’ve got heard this, it is in all probability from somebody in style on X who’s gotten dogpiled by the perimeter left on Bluesky. And to be clear, these dynamics are actual, disagreeable, and one thing I might think about Bluesky administration considers an issue, since repelling notable posters can crimp general progress. But the standard expertise for a typical Bluesky consumer isn’t not like traditional Twitter: folks comply with folks they’re all in favour of and interactions are usually constructive. Moreover, partially by not imposing the “link penalty”, sufficient journalists who joined Bluesky in prior years have caught round that it usually seems like the present house of “tech journalism Twitter”, together with the type of conversations that reach from that. Threads has gotten a nasty rap for comparable causes, although with Meta shepherding tens of millions of customers every week to the app, the userbase now feels very normie. A whole lot of journalists and different information pundits in tech contemplate this an viewers they can not ignore, so you may discover tech news-relevant conversations there as nicely. So whereas neither community has surpassed X by way of tech trade information commentary (and each have a protracted technique to go on AI, VC, and crypto chatter), when you care what folks say on X, it is best to keep watch over the opposite networks too.

To summarize, a bunch of individuals in tech with a vested curiosity in primarily changing into the media are hoping you may consider the world of stories dissemination has turned fully the wrong way up. And then conveniently the corners of the web the place they’ve a foothold simply so occur to be the longer term! But it is best to actually consider your personal eyes: sure, information has developed significantly with the web, however journalists are nonetheless fairly often the earliest to chronicle a number of what we have to find out about how the trade is altering. Not so shockingly, information professionals drive information. And there are networks taking part in a job in information different than simply the one owned by the world’s richest man.

So briefly, as loads in media adjustments, loads stays the identical. And Techmeme’s consistency is a product of what is fixed in on-line media.

Will Techmeme stay constant for one more 20 years?

Honestly, we do not know. Even although now we have 20 years behind us, projecting 20 years sooner or later feels foolhardy. And this has been a troublesome week to even think about the place our nation can be in 20 years. But I can record few common instructions we’re contemplating for our continued work over the subsequent few years, and so they all construct on, and never upend, what we have completed:

• Participation: Recently we have launched new methods for newsmakers and comms professionals to explicitly tip hyperlinks. Under each headline on our desktop web page an “Add Link Here” button seems while you hover over the information, and we’re comfortable so as to add any secondary hyperlink (LinkedIn posts, tweets, weblog posts, and so forth.) rounding out our aggregation for that story. And whereas we’re fussier about that includes new top-level headlines, we now have a kind for tipping these as nicely. I consider there are a lot of different methods enter from customers may enhance the location and sit up for introducing options to solicit this enter.
• Customization: While each reader of our homepage sees the identical Techmeme, for over 5 years we have supplied aggregation companies that allow corporations uncover trending or carefully-filtered information in actual time. Customers embody tech corporations of all sizes, together with tech giants, in addition to VC corporations, who’re particularly thrilled with our portfolio information monitoring. If you want to seek out out what we are able to do for you, e-mail .
• Expansion: What I have not but talked about right here is that alongside Techmeme we function aggregation websites monitoring different information verticals, like Mediagazer for media, and even websites operating with no human editors, like memeorandum for US politics. I consider by including extra smarts (significantly LLM-enabled intelligence) throughout our software program platform, including extra high quality information verticals over time turns into attainable.

It’s a tech trade cliche, however I actually really feel we’re initially of our mission right here. So thanks for becoming a member of us throughout our first 20 years, and I hope you may take pleasure in what lies forward. And this concludes our self-absorption — now again to information about different corporations!