Interview with Matthew Chen, Founder of Megite.com

Q1: Today we are talking with the founder of the River Of News and mainly the web site – Megite, Matthew Chen. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to answer a few questions. First one. How do you think your River Of News compares to say established sites like Techmeme?

We believe the differences to be in terms of Quality, Coverage, Comprehensiveness, Relevance, and the fact that it’s up to date. We have been working hard to put ourselves ahead.

Techmeme came to market before us. But we are in good shape now. We still have lots of room to improve. The first difference is that our powerful algorithm makes it very easy to create new verticals.

Because of the auto discovery, Megite can keep the pace with the blogspace. Normally good high quality blogs can be auto discovered.

Also, Megite is able to deliver the personalized version with the user’s reading list.

Q2: What was the main driving force in creating the site? Was if for personal use, or did you always intend to put it out there for everyone?

Originally we developed Megite for our personal use. It is the first site we visit every day and kinds of replaces our RSS reader. Then we realize that if we use it every day, other people may like it too. So we make it public in Feb, 2006. Since then, we redesigned UI, improved the algorithm, expand the coverage, lots of good stuff are added to make our users happy.

Q3: If you could describe your site to a non-tech person, how would you tell them about it? How would you convince them that your site was just as necessary to learn how to use? What I am saying is – Could you convince anyone to put your site in their web bookmarks?

I would think that Megite is an Intelligent RSS reader. Because there are millions of blogs around the web, users definitely need better, or intelligent readers to help them sort out the quality and relevent feeds. Otherwise, it will be information overloaded. That is why some users just stick to some A-list bloggers because they don’t have time to look at other blogs that may be new and not well-knowned, but those bloggers may have great insight on the things happening now.

The first function for the reader is to aggregrate feeds from different sources; second, it has to have some intelligence to rank, sort out good and relevant info, and discover more new info that is out of user’s expectation; third, it should be able to have some collaborative recommendation or social filtering features; fourth, it needs to monitor the changes and presents the news as users are ready to read. Of course, users are generally lazy, we need to allow users do as little work as possible.

Q4: Tell us a bit about your site and company now. How many employees, are you looking for VC funding, what your goals are, looking for more team members, etc.. What ever you feel safe releasing for public information here to the readers.

We are located in Silicon Valley. Currently we have 2 people working on this project and of course always look for good people to join us. We are self funded now. For sure we need outside funds before we can launch the personalized Megite. Several potential revenue channels: License software and techniques; Channel or vertical sponsors; Ad supported Megite network; etc.

Megite keeps updating our blog (http://blog.megite.com/) about what’s going on at Megite. Users can get know us more from there.

Q5: Thanks again Matthew for visiting with myself and mainly the readers of this blog Technically Speaking. Now it’s your turn. If there is anything that hasn’t been covered yet, let loose here in the last question. Whatever else you’d like to say.

Deliver what our users want first. Then things will take care of itself. Do it step by step, we don’t want it just as fashion.

If a user wants to build his/her own personalized Megite, he/she can email us the link to his/her reading list.

Technically Speaking, I would like to again thank Matthew Chen for his time in doing this, and I want to say – thanks to my loyal readers who helped out in the short downtime I had today. Without the fans, Rex Dixon is just Rex. 🙂

Panama by Yahoo

I am such a geek. When I say “Panama” I still picture and hear the song by Van Halen; the “real” Van Halen with DLR of course.

Now what Yahoo has cooking could be very well the dawn of a new statistics age for the internet. Something that Rex Dixon has been stating all the time – better statistics. Here is an excerpt from their press release:

Yahoo!’s new search marketing platform now provides a streamlined, user-friendly sign-up process that allows businesses to create a sponsored search account in five easy steps. Once in, advertisers can quickly create campaigns, determine their desired position, understand their potential share of available clicks, set their budgets, and then see their ads online within minutes. In addition, Yahoo!’s new ad testing and optimization features allow advertisers to easily test their creative options and manage their campaigns to the goals they have for return on investment.

Amanda Congdon is live on ABC today

We had talked about Amanda Congdon a bit awhile ago. It was released this morning on Om’s network that she will be live and world wide today. No YouTube yet, but you can bet she will be there like minutes after her first debut show. You will have to watch it live if you want to see it before the YouTube debut.

Technically Speaking, I wish her the best and hope she does well on ABC.

craigslist.org is a true model citizen

Jim Buckmaster may not be motivated by the almighty dollar, but craigslist.org is probably one of the more respected sites on the internet. It’s well written as far as speed goes, coverage is amazing, and to think it all started in a small apartment in San Francisco. I’m sure that Craig Newmark is glad that Jim is the CEO having to deal with people that just don’t get it.

Bankers and money people (Venture Capitalists) may never understand. Jim does. He understands that being a social provider of outstanding content doesn’t mean you have to slap ads all over and make a ton of money. I will have to agree it is a refreshing attitude and something we all can learn from.

Technically Speaking, I read about VC this, VC that, CPM this, CPM that every day. I read about companies that have no biz plan getting $5 million dollars; okay a biz plan that is based on smoke and mirrors. It is quite nice to see a company that believes in being a true .org and not in name only.

Yahoo dethroned?

I finally looked at the actual numbers, and yes MySpace did pass Yahoo. But a dethroning? MySpace did contribute to the main numbers for Fox Interactive Media. But a dethroning? The funny thing is, I haven’t checked my MySpace account for like a week now.

Why? Because, if the site is going to keep up, you need to fix MySpace. Plain and simple the network infrastructure sucks. Bottom line, the last time I was on MySpace it was not a fun experience. It was slow, like I was on a dial up connection again. I couldn’t reply to messages without getting an error message. It took me 20 minutes of my time to respond to a few messages from my friends there. Stupid. Waste of my time!
I’ve said it, others have said it, and still MySpace passes Yahoo. For this month at least. To me, 39.5 and 38 million is not a “dethroning”. It’s a temporary change for the month. MySpace really wants to stay on top?

Take all the money that Fox Interactive has, and get some people to — what is it? — FIX the network infrastructure!!! Geesh, does Rex Dixon need to go to MySpace and become CTO and whip some of you into shape?!?

The Top 20

Do many of you out there believe there is a dark horse #21 in the mix? I always do, but nevertheless Mr. Scobleizer posted the link to this long probably by now forgotten late October article from CNN Money. It’s a great way to see if your company is on track for VC funding.

Let’s just remember – there is always dark horse candidate #21.

SkypeOut no longer will be free

SkypeOut will be going paid next for 2007. I recommend buying the $14.95 yearly plan deal if you plan to make allot of SkypeOut calls. I will tell you that I have personally tried the SkypeOut service. I had a crystal clear connection to Germany. It was like talking to my girlfriend in the next room. That clear. The price goes up to $29.95 for a yearly rate starting January 31, 2007.

Technically Speaking, the $14.95 is worth it if you plan to make a ton of SkypeOut calls next year.

The .TV domain

I believe it’s starting to make a comeback. ChannelME.tv is launching today and will have some interesting promotional ideas. Are there any web historians out there? The reason I ask is teh .tv domain has been around for around only 5 years? This could be your chance to grab the tv remote from television’s grasp.

Starting today, you can register your .tv domain at ChannelME.tv. In the near future they will have tools for you to be – Technically Speaking – your own online TV show. Like I said, taking the remote from television’s grasp.