When an algorithm is just not enough

One of the best technology news aggregator websites has just become a cyborg. Techmeme, which is followed hourly by many in the technology community in the US and elsewhere (including me), has hired a human to work alongside its algorithms to rank and cluster breaking news items.

The site's founder Gabe Rivera revealed in a blog that he had hired Megan McCarthy, formerly of tech industry gossip site Valleywag, to "improve the mix of headlines' by eliminating obsolete stories faster, promoting breaking news and grouping items more effectively.

The move has already stirred some controversy with Mike Arrington of TechCrunch questioning the objectivity of the human and machine model. Rivera makes the point that no news aggregation is ever objective. He says: "Techmeme isn't fair because life isn't fair, and Techmeme will always be biased because humans have built Techmeme. And because news judgement, by definition, is bias." Which I think is a fair point.

Read Rivera's post in full here. It's at the top of Techmeme, of course.