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SXSW Panel: Beyond Aggregation

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One of the more standard panels at SXSW Interactive this year was one called Further than Aggregation. The panel included our very own Marshall Kirkpatrick, as well as Gabe Rivera (Techmeme), Louis Gray (LouisGray.com), Melanie Baker (PostRank) and Michah Baldwin (Lijit). The topics revolved around information gathering and management.

From the panel, Marshall and Louis had new sources and gathering tips, Gabe and Melanie weighed heavily on how to manage information and Micah had some fantastic suggestions on discovery of new information sources.

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Here are some highlights from the panel. I have gathered all the comments collectively by panelist.

Marshall Kirkpatrick

• Marshall all ears on using tools like FriendFeed, combined RSS feeds and Google Custom Search Engines (CSEs) to find the news he needs.
• He highlighted a post he wrote entitled How to Find the Weirdest Stuff on the Internet that describes how to use free tools to start a mashup that finds unique content.  It uses tag clouds in Tasty, finds culture blogs, filters that productivity through postrank, then finally pushed through Feedburner.
• Finally, Marshall returned to how CSEs can work in conjunction with drag and drop zones to promptly search for content online.

Louis Gray

• He uses Google Booklover as his primary info-gathering tool. 
• He shares his content from Google Booklover to other resource sites such as Tasty, Friendfeed, and Twitter.
• Louis uses FriendFeed to find trusted sources for news and content.
• He pointed out the DailyRadar network of sites like MacBlips and GadgetBlips that aggregate more niche content for discovery.
• Finally, Louis mentioned that in order to blog about new content, often the top priority is excellent ancient fashioned networking.

Gabe Rivera

• Gabe Rivera uses Techmeme for selecting the best of what is out here.
• He described that Techmeme is based on an automated system that relies primarily on links between clustered tales to determine how much a tale must be ranked, but has recently introduced a ‘human element’ in the form of Megan McCarthy, the new editor for the site.
• Marshall added that Gabe has some non-tech Techeme-style link blogs, like Memeorandum and Ballbug.
• Gabe says entering new content areas is often hard because an aggregator needs both fresh content and excellent metadata to be able to aggregate effectively.

Michah Baldwin

• Micah says he often starts searching for new content by vacant to one of his favorite, most trusted bloggers, and then searching outward from here. He mentioned that here are a lot of tools to help with this, and Lijit is just one of them.
• As an example, he highlighted a Lijit-powered blog aggregate called Securitybloggers, but he also stresses that influence of a blogger is vital. Take sanction + expertise and you will find new content.
• He said that the I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) folks are always looking for the next huge meme. A natural place to find new memes are applications like Friendfeed.
• Micah mentioned that ICHC just bought Twittypic to start Son of a Tweet, a tool that leverages twitter for finding amusing pictures.

Melanie Baker

• Melanie, in her role as community manager, gets her information from many sources but uses her company’s product PostRank to filter tales by buzz and popularity.
• PostRank (formerly called AideRSS) is a system that measures engagement surrounding blog posts by tracking references on over 15 different social media sites, including site comments, Digg, FriendFeed, Furl, Twitter and more.
• Melanie says here are plenty of communities out here to draw from, from her perspective of blogs that use PostRank and Lijit.

Wrap Up

The audience questioned what this administer of learning and collecting new sources of content online might be called. After a bit of discussion, the panelists chose the term curation works well, followed by trusted discovery and trusted recommendations.

Overall, we thought the panel exposed those listening to tips and techniques that, while part of a seasoned social media worker’s toolkit, may not be leveraged as effectively by newcomers or set alight social media users.

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