San Francisco-based memetracker Tailrank went live in 2.0 today with a design upgrade, major algorithm change, new entertainment category, and few other nifty changes. Since its launch, this marks it first major change.
Design-wise, expect to find a lot more gradients and a much well structured layout. Also, they’ve added the ability to expand/collapse a story, something so simple yet I’m sure I’ve seen any other memetracker do. I noticed there’s a new ‘Breaking News’ and ‘Top Posts from Yesterday,’ resembling Techmeme’s ‘New Item Finder’ and ‘Earlier Items’ respectively.
To be honest, I’ve never really been a fan of Tailrank on the algorithmic and clustering side — I think it breaks stories too late and 90% of those are which I little or no interest in (opposite of Techmeme) — but with their new improvements I might soon have to change my mind. At a glance, today’s ones were quite timely and significant, but consistency is the key so only time can tell.
Two of the minor upgrades and additions I love is the new archives section and the ability to track stories via IM and RSS. To me, two of the most important things in a memetracker is the general algorithm and the ways in which (other than the website) the stories can be obtained. They’ve done a good job of keeping up.
[tags]Tailrank, Memetrackers, Upgrades & Relaunches[/tags]
