The Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray ended an old-media/new-media fight with TechMeme's Gabe Rivera by comparing content aggregation to nuclear weapons, thus losing the tiff.

TechMeme's Megan McCarthy (an ex Valleywag), meanwhile, supplied a thoroughly-modern-fairy-tale ending to the saga of Baloon Boy.

Actor Rainn Wilson, meanwhile, called for corporal punishment, if by "corporal" you mean "probably lethal."

New York Times food writer Kim Severson came down with print-media kitchen envy.

The Chicago Tribune's Mary Kate Chambers found a good reason to be ecstatic about bad weather.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

The claim that websites which link to news stories are somehow harming them has been advanced by everyone from Journal editor Robert Thomson to AP chairman Dean Singleton. As geeks like Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera (left) have pointed out, they are blithering dunderheads who miss the point that links generate traffic to their own websites. Meanwhile, the doddering newspaper barons' cleverer lieutenants are trying to get into the business themselves.

The proof is in a new study by Hitwise, an online traffic-pattern tracker. Analyst Heather Dougherty has found that search engines, portals, social networks, and blogs generate about 40 percent of the link traffic to news websites, a proportion that has remained more or less unchanged for the past two years. Here's the chart:

Besides search engines, what generates the most traffic for news websites? Other news websites, it turns out. CNN.com, MSNBC, Fox News, the New York Times, and NBC's Weather Channel rank in the top 10 traffic sources to the news and media category, according to Dougherty's study.

Techmeme's Rivera argues that news organizations complaining about aggregators aren't just wrongheaded — they're hypocrites, too, he told CNET News:

[The] WSJ (a News Corp. property) and NYT (a key AP member) are both themselves news aggregators. Both maintain sections which quote headlines from external sites. So, constituents of these organizations already know aggregation is useful and fair. This knowledge just hasn't reached AP's and News Corp.'s leadership.

The implication: The newspaper industry's real problem isn't that sites like Google News and Techmeme exist. It's that they don't own them.

(Photo via Gabe Rivera)

Foul-mouthed, abusive, self-loathing Guardian gadfly Paul Carr made a joke as outdated as Wired editor Chris Anderson's economic theories.

Allegedly reformed White House press-corps lothario Jake Tapper reported on others' sleeping arrangements.

Jossip blogger Drew Grant took the Kal Penn news particularly hard.

Chicago Tribune food writer Monica Eng took her job a bit too seriously.

Rachel Sklar of Abrams Research hosted Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera on a trip east.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

• Steve Ballmer
• Mitchell Baker
• Jeff Bezos
• Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt
• Jeff Clavier
• Paul Graham
• Arianna Huffington
• Joi Ito
• Steve Jobs
• Jonathan Kaplan
• Loic Le Meur
• Jack Ma
• Matt Mullenweg
• Rupert Murdoch
• Craig Newmark
• Gabe Rivera
• Kevin Rose
• Sheryl Sandberg
• Jon Stewart
• Peter Thiel
• Maria Thomas
• Anssi Vanjoki
• Jimmy Wales
• Evan Williams
• Jerry Yang

Unlike Technorati, which tracked the entire blogosphere, Techmeme only tracks a limited set of tech-centered blogs. And make no mistake, all the tech blogs, Valleywag fully included, scramble for top position in any discussion that appears there. (Techmeme differs from most other memetrackers by presenting stories in clusters, highlighting the original story that generates the most blog discussion, and secondarily listing the blogs that link to it.)

The result? The top of Techmeme's Leaderboard lists TechCrunch, a tech blog which enjoys a surfeit of attention from sycophantic entrepreneur-bloggers. And why are they linking to the site? Some may genuinely enjoy it, but I'd argue that most of them are hoping to get TechCrunch editor's Michael Arrington for their startups by linking to his posts. It's a smart strategy, on both Arrington's part and the entrepreneurs'. And Techmeme, founded by Gabe Rivera, who used to crash on Arrington's couch, merely serves to complete the circle. (It should come as no surprise that Arrington himself broke the story of Techmeme's new feature.)

But does anyone believe, for a moment, that TechCrunch is somehow more important than Engadget or the New York Times, the No. 2 and No. 3 news sources on Techmeme's list? It's not, of course. Nor is it better read — not by a long shot.

Techmeme itself enjoys an exceedingly small, if devoted audience. Most of its readers, I believe, are tech bloggers like me, who read it more to check the rankings than to discover news. I love Techmeme, but I also recognize that it's not a big source of traffic.

So why all the fuss about Techmeme's new top-blogs list? By ranking blogs on links, not traffic, it reinforces the founding myth of Technorati: It's not who reads you, it's who blogs you that matters. And by limiting itself to tech blogs, Techmeme confirms most tech bloggers' sheltered worldview. Why pay attention to the world outside, or cater to mainstream readers' interests? The only people worth caring about are the ones already on your blogroll.

Scoble's "theory" is that Facebook, a social network; Techmeme, a very small tech news aggregator; and Mahalo, the umpteenth attempt to organize the Web with human editors rather than robotic "crawlers," can unseat Google, the king of search. His argument centers around the boogie monster of search engine optimization, or SEO. His arguments, such as they are, have several obvious flaws:

• SEO is not inherently evil. It's also how quality sites get relevant results as top links in search results. Google works hand in hand with SEO practitioners to both combat bad SEO and to promote good SEO.
• Scoble ignores link quality, relevance, breadth of results, breadth of search terms, timeliness (how quickly a link appears as well as how long it remains valuable, a problem also known as "link rot") and other factors affecting search quality just as much if not more so than SEO.
• Mahalo, Techmeme, and Facebook are not immune to SEO. (An SEO expert comments that he's gotten search-optimized listings accepted to Mahalo.)
• Even if Mahalo, Techmeme, and Facebook were immune to SEO, Scoble doesn't link these very disparate systems together — aside from drawing some arrows on his whiteboard.
• Even if Mahalo, Techmeme, and Facebook were truly immune to SEO and were plausibly linked together, they would just represent one of many alternative search engines attempting to use social features, voting, human-editing, and several other methods to augment search while trying to compete with Google. Thus far, these efforts have failed.

His theory isn't even backed up by facts. He makes several errors:

• He begins by saying, of his own video, "You couldn't have found this from search." Of course, Google and Techmeme, both algorithm-based search engines, listed his page shortly after posting.
• Then he claims that Google can't compete with Mahalo because their algorithms are "stuck in sand... in cement ... If they changed their algorithms, there would be too much of an outcry." Scoble appears laughably unaware that Google is constantly tweaking its algorithms, routinely defeating SEO attempts to game the system, despite the outcry from search-engine marketers.
• Scoble fabricates the number of search results Mahalo can generate — this, even as he mentions that Calacanis has provided "actual" numbers. Never mind that Calacanis's idealized projection was for the generation of 50,000 results per year by 100 editors, or the updating of 25,000 results using 1,000 volunteers in 15 days. Scoble thinks Mahalo can create 20,000 results a day! Yes, a day.

And he's inconsistent:

• Mahalo is, according to Scoble, immune to SEO, but "Jason [Calacanis] can spam the system all day long."
• Mahalo's results are better, but they are "very incomplete right now."
• Scoble has criticized Techmeme for being a pale imitator of Google News; now he feels it's a Google-beater?
• Scoble actually says a commenter is correct, that Mahalo doesn't scale: "This stuff doesn't scale, and he's right." He then pulls the above Mahalo numbers out of his ass to prove, somehow, that Mahalo does scale.
• He then says to be successful they need to "keep it small." What?
• Despite his argument being predicated on Google's supposed inability to deal with SEO, he refers to algorithms throughout: Facebook's algorithms, Techmeme's algorithms, Mahalo's algorithms, the algorithms to tie these systems together. At one point Scoble shows a glimmer of self-awareness, as he stumbles over this contradiction: "What if the algorithm... what if the algorithm... what if everyone had their own little Mahalo..." What if we all had a pony, Robert?

Scoble then erases his entire argument off the whiteboard and whispers that Yahoo will be the real winner because they bought some social sites and because they have "weird mojo." Okay then!

Techmeme is a niche news aggregator using a small subset of sources to provide a daily flow of news to a small audience. Facebook is a hot social network drawing its own set of "Facebook optimizers." Mahalo is an already-failed experiment being rehashed by Calacanis. Scoble thinks he can conjure up the vision of a Google search killer simply by drawing meaningless lines on a whiteboard between these three sites and putting it on video. But he can't, and he doesn't.

All he's assembled is evidence, on video, that he doesn't understand tech, doesn't understand video, and doesn't understand himself. He's an expert, in other words, on exactly none of his three favorite topics.

At one point, Scoble says: "Where are we going with this? I don't know!" No one else does either. The most sensible explanation? Scoble's conducting a public job interview. Rumor has it that he's already tried to land a job at Facebook. But Scoble working for Jason Calacanis at Mahalo? The two will make a perfect pair: misinformed, contradictory, self-promoting evangelists who will do anything for the next buck.

Scoble wants us to believe that Sun's newly announced blade servers are Techmeme-worthy even though he admits, "This probably will only be interesting to those of you who buy equipment for data centers." Does Scoble think Techmeme is for people responsible for purchasing decisions in data centers? No, of course not. The blogger is merely trying to promote stories no one cares about. He also finds the opportunity to repeat his new tagline ("the guy who put a human face on Microsoft" has worn out): "the guy who reads a lot of feeds" because he can't find one source for news. But, wait, I thought Scoble didn't want Techmeme to emulate Google News? Aren't islands of news with specialized purposes and audiences a good thing? It'd be great if the Scobleizer could sort out what he's trying to say before he starts whining.

Gabe Rivera, Techmeme's founder and developer, thinks so and sets Scoble straight:

Techmeme actually wants to be a selection of interesting Tech news stories. A particular take on "what matters", suitable for a particular audience.

In many ways, it wants to be the anti-Google News, though [in] other ways it needs to be more like it...

BTW, I personally give the advantage to Techmeme on the blade server story, which sounds rather boring, something best passed over. Is the fact that you covered it for Podtech affecting your judgement in this case?

More from Gabe Rivera in the comments.

In introducing TechMeme, Gabe humbly states: "It's just a news site..." When detailing the "magic" of automating the selection of the best headlines for display, an often imitated but never duplicated endeavor, he concludes: "It's just that kind of thing." Compare these statements to the Cole Valley classified pioneer's description of Craigslist: "It's just a simple platform where people help each other out."

Gabe exudes an unexplainable and genuine nerdy charm throughout the interview that isn't easily achieved by the most socially adept. It appears as if he is capable of tapping directly into the welllspring of Craig Newmark's anti-charisma.

While others would pursue funding, new hires, and promotion, Rivera seems content with the altruism he can share with the web: "the nicest thing is people find it useful." Although he has expanded his formula to a few other sites, has sought tax filing help, and may hire additional staff soon, "it's all [him]."

Although it would be difficult to achieve the widespread, mainstream notoriety of Newmark without vastly expanding the success of TechMeme to his other news aggregators — memeorandom (politics), WeSmirch (rumors), and ballbug (major league baseball) — and other more general web properties (unlikely), Gabe Rivera appears to be walking the path, previously believed to be reserved for only Craig Newmark, to success. That success may remain in the insular world of technology rather than the broader celebrity of Craigslist's founder, limiting Gabe Rivera to a niche Craig Newmark 2.0, but he appears genuinely capable of tapping into a formula and personality thought to be unique and irreproducable.

TechCrunch tech blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick, innocently blogging about "rent-free" housing in a roundup of the "gay male online social networking space":

ManJam offers listings for rooms and houses for rent or to live in rent-free.

CrunchNotes, the personal blog of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington (above right), mentioning his housemate (above left), the creator of Techmeme:

Gabe Rivera noticed it since I was still sleeping and he made the decision to wake me up as it was "a situation you might want to deal with."

Please tell us, for the sake of Mike's girlfriend, that Gabe pays rent.

Eight Social Networking Sites for Men Who Love Men [TechCrunch]
So My Electricity Was Turned Off Today [CrunchNotes]

Now that TechCrunch blog founder Michael Arrington moved his monthly megabashes elsewhere, he can hold intimate house parties again. Last night, Mr. Bubble-blower had some guests over to his Atherton ranch after the Future of Web Apps conference in San Francisco. Scott Beale, the Frank Worth of Web 2.0, shot these pics.

Mike gets a goblet, guests get plastic cups.

So that's what happened to Senator Ted Stevens's staff.

While the party roars at Mike's house, Techmeme creator Gabe Rivera bitterly holds his own campfire outside his hermit shack in Mike's garden.

Forbes, 2008: "And that's how __, once worth $2 billion and now a red line on Viacom's balance sheet, began in a blogger's backyard."

This is as close to debauchery as it gets out here. No, I don't know why we haven't all shot ourselves either.

"Dese mah bitches!"

The Future of Web Apps @ TechCrunch [Laughing Squid]

• Yahoo gets an NYT section cover story for, um, improving its ad program. Thrilling. [NYT]
• Cry baby cry: Apple (the White Album one) loses its case against Apple (the White iPod one). [BBC]
• The New York Times starts its E3 coverage. A week of coy euphemisms for "booth babe" commences. [NYT]
• Tech Memeorandum is now Techmeme. Given that creator Gabe Rivera lives with TechCrunch creator Michael Arrington, this is all kinds of wrong. [Techmeme]
• Big-time graphics firm Silicon Graphics Inc. goes bankrupt, just a couple months after picking a new CEO who cut an eighth of the team. One assumes the government won't be subsidising SGI to protect the economy. [CNET]