So do I. I wouldn't be surprised to be dead wrong, but it sure as heck seems like a lot of subtle decisions are made about what to or not to favor. It's not unusual for me to come across blog posts from reasonably well-known blogs that are not considered in a memeorandum list on the same topic - someone is making manual decisions not to list every single relevant blog entry.

And the people who decide which, of 10,000 little stories that have *not* gotten any echo chamber bounceback yet - those individual stories with no 2nd/3rd/4th links - which 8 of those make it to the page? That almost HAS to be human.

Last, but not least, there's no rhyme or reason to which blog or which angle on a story gets the "lead" while other ones are left as mere hyperlinks. I suppose it could be based on hits - but I doubt it.

I agree, there is a ton of small-ball wankery, as well as a consistent rewarding of frantic speculation. Nevertheless, it's a great barrel in which to shoot fish, can't deny that. Has its uses.

NB --- there is something about both OTB and esp. the Newshoggers that the Memeorandum algorythm loves for the 'interesting' post of the minute sidebar --- still have not figured that one out yet.

I sometimes wonder how much of it is manual.
That said, I pulled their widget out of my sidebar a week or so back after a year of no link love from them. Time was, I used to get all kinds of traffic from them. No clue what happened.

As one of many deeply absorbed in the US Presidential elections, I spent a lot of time scouring the news to gain insights into the latest as the extraordinary story unfolded. I consistently found that blog aggregator Memeorandum provided the......

NB --- there is something about both OTB and esp. the Newshoggers that the Memeorandum algorythm loves for the 'interesting' post of the minute sidebar --- still have not figured that one out yet.