David Cohn had an excellent post today about how blogging journalists; or as Fred Wilson would say - journabloggers, are missing out on a great resource by ignoring or not using bookmarking social networks. But that is not the primary reason for this post. What is however is how I came across this gem of a post. It wasn’t through Techmeme, it wasn’t through Technorati, in short it wasn’t through any of what is slowly becoming old style ways of finding interesting things to read about.

No .. where I found out about Dave’s post was through on of the people in my FriendFeed network. In fact the more I thought about the more I realized that since I had really started using FriendFeed full time I actually had been relying a lot less on things like Techmeme, Technorati or any of the other typical sources of news these days in the blogging world.

The thing is that I had seen the original post that lead me to the DijiDave’s blog in the Techmeme feed but didn’t think much of it. But because one of the people whom I respect and is a part of my FriendFeed network I started the trip that ended up with me reading Dave’s post. In effect over a period of only a couple of days the way I have found interesting things to read has shifted. No longer is Techmeme even a secondary source of news if anything it has fallen even further down my list of go to places.

The other thing that I have noticed is that Techmeme traffic is a lot like traffic from digg.com or StumbleUpon. When a story hits you can get a nice rush of traffic; especially if you hit the above the fold section of the page, but the residual effects of the spike don’t stick. Oh you might pick up one or two new subscribers but that is few and far between. With things like FriendFeed though, the traffic you will see is more consistent and I think brings people who are more likely to stick around. When the Techmeme traffic slows down your long term benefits from things like FriendFeed traffic is still growing.

As Techmeme becomes the playground of press releases and MSM trying to catch the blogging wave I think bloggers may end finding new ways to find the good stories. As Technorati plays around with trying to figure out what they are doing networks like FriendFeed are proving to provide a more trusted source of new stories. I don’t think that Techmeme or things like Technorati are in any danger of disappearing through all this but I do think that some much better alternatives are beginning to surface.

Sure managing things like your FriendFeed network take time but in the long run I am beginning to believe that it is going to be time well invested as I develop an ever growing news and information network that is easy to use and most importantly made up of people I trust. I don’t think you can have the same feeling of trust with things like Techmeme, Google blog search or Techmeme especially as they have become the target of PR firms and spammers. Trusted networks like FriendFeed or even the Elite Tech News reddit that I am a part of will eventually save you time as you don’t have to filter through the rising tide of garbage.

I’d say that is time well invested, after all I got to read a really good post and subscribe to an excellent blog in the process. I call that a great ROI.

Conversation Tags: blogging, information networks, Techmeme, Technorati, FriendFeed