Rookiememe – the next killer Web app
I think we’ve all been looking in the wrong places for the best and coolest new web app or web service.
Those of us who fear the lingering influence of the Techmeme, RSSMeme, Google Sharing, Digg, Techcrunch, etc. effects are looking for new ideas, fresh content, and wanting to discover the best new content out there.
In the interest of smashing the walls of the virtual echo chamber, I think it’s time for a brand new app. It’s time to throw out the old standards and really, really try something new.
Enter: Rookiememe
Rookiememe will be a simple but effective Web app that is focused on finding new, fresh ideas by looking for… new and fresh blogs.
Rookiememe will have the following general characteristics:
In order to qualify for a spot on Rookiememe, you:
- Must have a domain less than two months old, preferably buried in the Google “sandbox” (the one that’s not supposed to exist)
- Must never have been linked to
- As per the above, it must have a Technorati rating of zero.
- It must not link out to anything that’s been on Techmeme within the past month
- It must be written in proper English and not obviously be culled together to sell GoogleAds or other online advertising
- In fact, it can’t be allowed to have any advertising on it at all
And that’s just the start. Just imagine how new and different this content will be!
OH, and it would not have a leaderboard, because anything that becomes popular will immediately be removed from Rookiememe.
What do you think? Is this a potential goldmine or what?
Svetlana Gladkova:
Excellent idea, definitely, this will ensure that we actually can discover really new content. But the problem I see here is that the application will never really take off since no tech blog could bring it any popularity because we won't cover it (because we can't hit the non-existing leaderboard or get any traffic from it). And why do I have a feeling that the app will be cluttered with “Hello world, this is my first post”?
16 July 2008, 6:49 amMark Dykeman:
Ah, the paradoxical power of the Rookiememe. But, to your point, the hypothetical Rookiememe should filter out the “hello world” stuff.
16 July 2008, 7:06 amSvetlana Gladkova:
Yes, it should filter – but it will definitely be the unique content (unless it is an automated Wordpress greetings post, of course). So I'm still afraid we'll have to read endless self-representations again and again over there.
But maybe I'm wrong, if any developer chooses to code something this complex, hopefully they will also find out how to distinguish news from everything else.
16 July 2008, 9:01 amMark Dykeman:
It's all a hypothetical exercise at this time.
16 July 2008, 10:37 amDan:
Just the kind of post any stealth start-up worries about
Mark, you've described a great concept. In fact, we've been working on something similar for a few months now. Of course I grabbed rookiememe.com – check it out.
16 July 2008, 10:53 amMark Dykeman:
OK, I was only about 25% serious when I wrote this post, so this is really, really weird. But good luck to you!
16 July 2008, 11:16 amDan:
Thanks! Well, it may seem odd at first, but as you said, so many unique and amazing stuff go unnoticed because we constantly consume what I like to call popular mediocrity. I know we all hit up Techmeme, some probably refresh the page every hour or so – but really, do we care all that much about iPhone sales figures? Or AOL mergers? Or Yahoo-MSFT couldn't-care-less exchange of love letters?
Well, we'll see how it works out
16 July 2008, 11:22 amSvetlana Gladkova:
Yes, I keep forgetting, really
16 July 2008, 1:00 pmRankings Suck, So Now What? - Regular Geek:
[...] what do we need? Mark Dykeman has a great satirical post about RookieMeme. The idea was to have a way for new blogs to get a chance to be seen. The comments on the blog and [...]
17 July 2008, 6:34 amBlog ranking discussion takes on life of its own | Broadcasting Brain:
[...] a team of people who were working on something similar to what I described in my semi-satirical post about a fictional Rookiememe, so they’re on to something and more power to [...]
17 July 2008, 7:07 am