Buzztracker

For all of you who like to use buzztrackers like Techmeme and Tailrank comes a new service that may blow out the category to a much wider audience.

Buzztracker.com launched quietly on Friday afternoon. I know this because my friend Al Warms, who convinced me to commit to a feedreader, is the entrepreneur behind Buzztracker.

There's a lot to like and lot to criticize about Buzztracker. Hopefully they''ll continue to refine the service and address the shortcomings. I always encourage people to launch early and take the criticism as free product feedback.

The things I like about the service is the breadth of content that it addresses. You can see buzztrackers on topics as diverse as food, Boston Red Sox (and every major sports team), videogames, diet and fitness,  stocks, and of course, music. I counted 41 topics plus every major sports team. The breadth of the service is very ambitious and Al told me that they are eventually going to let their users create their own topics which will be available to everyone.

I also love the fact that you can subscribe to each and every buzztracker as an rss feed, the inclusion of topic specific most buzzed Flickr photos and YouTube videos, and email and digg integration.

But there are some shortcomings to the buzztracker service. First, I think it lacks the feed density it needs. if you compare the techmeme front page and the buzztracker tech front page, you'll see that techmeme does a better job with that category. Of course, you'd expect that to be the case since techmeme has been around for a while and buzztracker is just launching. But it's even true on the music page where buzztracker music is missing almost all of the top hypemachine music blogs. I spent some time trying to find a place to suggest a new feed and categorize it for them and it wasn't anywhere I could see it.

I also find the design jarring. Way too many google ads and way too much stuff happening on the page for my taste. Both can be solved with a good UI design which Al tells me is coming.

Bottom line - Buzztracker takes buzztracking to a whole new level in terms of content covered and has the potential to become a very interesting service to a much wider audience. I've subscribed to the front page and a few of the topic pages in MyYahoo and plan to monitor it closely in the coming months.

Comments

[howard lindzon]

Yep - agree about the launch - why not

It's a cool idea

[Anand from Chicago]

Fred –

Thanks for the review and feedback!

Our goal in launching early was exactly as you outlined – launch, get feedback and refine the features. I just wanted to address a few points you raised in your review.

1. Comparison to techmeme - we track a lot of the same blogs in our technology category but the algorithm we use to display stories in our “Most Blogged” section is different. We are geared towards displaying stories that have the most impact in each category – so by design we tend to display slightly older stories that have more links than more recent stories that have less links. There is obviously a fine balancing act here between relevance and freshness – and we should be able to figure out what the optimal algorithm for each category as we understand the news cycles in each category.

2. We do have a feedback form that visitors can use to recommend new blogs. But the fact that you couldn’t find it shows that need to do a better job of promoting this page :-)

We are going to address design and a whole bunch of other issues in the next few weeks – if you have suggestions or comments, feel free to send them our way via our feedback form or by emailing us at info -at- participatemedia.com.

Our team is exited about BuzzTracker and we think we’ve not even scratched the surface of what we can do with the underlying technology. But most of all, we’re excited to work with our new community of users to create a site that intelligently tracks what’s happening in the blogosphere.

Anand

[Tom Foremski]

Fred: You say there is a lot to like about the site but that the depth of tracking is poor, and the design is jarring, too many Google ads, etc. Then what is it that is to like about it? The secret to Techmeme is no secret really, you need a large enougth, weighted, base of sites to track. There aren't too many subject areas that have the required density of blogs to produce a Techmeme-like experience. So listing 41 categories + is meaningless because maybe only a handful have enough blog coverage. And in this case, even large subject areas such as music, were lacking sites that you personally know are influential... Again, tell us what there is to like about this site? Because it has 41+ categories? I know sometimes we are pressured to say something to support a friend, but if you can't keep it real, it is best not to say it, or just point to it :-)

[fred]

tom,

sorry for not being clear enough upfront.

i like the fact that there's a buzztracker for the redsox, the mets, the jets, food, exercise, travel, music, and all the other stuff that i care about other than technology and vc.

techmeme does a great job in that small space, but there's a big world out there and its about time someone started buzztracking all of that too.

[George Nimeh]

What a design disaster.

TechMeme may not be the prettiest site on the web, but at least it is clean and straight-forward.

It is painful to look at.

[Clyde Smith]

"I always encourage people to launch early and take the criticism as free product feedback."

I wish I'd caught this post back when it was fresh.

Still, I have to say that, as a small web publisher relying on a lot of new services, it's so tough sometimes doing all that free beta testing when you're trying to run a business.

What's even worse is that half the time you find something, you have to spend more time explaining to the customer service reps why it's enough of a problem to pass on to an engineer. That can be extremely frustrating when you have daily publication deadlines and, you know, work to do.

Nevertheless, as Lindzon put it, "launch and tweak" is the way to go these days. Which is why I'll never buy any physical products from any of this lot.