The other day Dave blogged about “river of news” functionality within memetrackers. I think he might be on to something here so I wanted some feedback regarding new Tailrank functionality.
One of the things that has bothered me for a while now is the fact that the front page of Tailrank (and other memetrackers) doesn’t update very often. On every given day there are only a few major stories that break out and bubble to the surface. Tailrank only ever identifies 10-30 posts per day which have a high enough rank to make it to the home page.
If you were to reload the site on any of the memetrackers every 6 hours or so you wouldn’t see much of a difference.
I’m thinking of reworking Tailrank in to more of a river of memes approach. Right now I show the top stories for the past 24 hours sorted by rank but I’m thinking that we should show memes, sorted by reverse chronology, but past a given threshold. The user could then adjust the threshold to show more or fewer posts. There would also be a sort mechanism so you could sort it by rank (the current view) if you wanted.
For example, say we have two stories. One on Apple and one on Google. Right now in Tailrank if the Apple story had 10 links (using links as a proxy for our somewhat complicated ranking algorithm) and Google had 50 then Google would be first (even if it were a few hours older than the Apple post).
In the new river of news mechanism I’d show posts the Apple story first (since it was past the minimum of 10 links threshold) and then show the Google story right after it since it was older.
What do you think guys? Is this a good idea? Should I run with it? If I do make this the default how should I provide the existing “stories from the last 24 hours sorted by ranking” functionality? Maybe I can just put all these stories on the sidebar?
If this is the right way to move forward I can push a release in the next few days to get some feedback.
All comments appreciated!
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March 11, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Kevin,
I agree. I check post in the last hour, and follow the big stories in the sidebar. I would think most readers would just go the the home page and wonder why it does not change. You could put more stories in the side bar.
I say go for it.
I read through Winers post and I still don’t understand what he wants. He said it does not exist yet. Hmm.
March 11, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Is there a difference between a ‘new’ post i.e. something that’s not linked to further up stream, rather than something that’s a derivative?
March 11, 2006 at 3:00 pm
There’s only one way to find out. I say, try it!
March 11, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Hey Kevin. The interesting thing I find is 80% of my Tailrank usage is stories that are within the last 1-2 hours. I’m far less concerned with the last 24 hours. So I think the more recent ‘Apple’ story first is better. Also, if users were able to control a (link) threshold – that would be awesome. I for example might be interested in filtering stories by only 1 inbound link (not 2 or 10) so I can read newer stories from more “offbeat” sources as Dave Winer says. So – yeah newer stuff, from a wider array of sources, thats why Tailrank Rox !
March 12, 2006 at 1:58 pm
You could create the DigSpy of TailRank. One column showing headlines as they flow in, and a main column showing the latest worthy of TailRank inclusion.
March 13, 2006 at 12:13 am
A live “DiggSpy” type page running on our webpages would be nice. It would make them look alive, and drive more traffic to Tailrank.