Techmeme is hiring someone to tweak their algorithms. It’s a new kind of role but one which I think we’ll be seeing more of in the future; in newsrooms and in corporate PR departments. When it’s so easy to aggregate, the next great war will be over the filter algorithm.

From the posting on craigslist (which I discovered via Matthew Ingram)

We’re not sure what to call this position. News Technician? News Analyst? Configuring Editor? The role involves interacting with an automated news-picking computer algorithm, configuring it and prodding it to ensure balanced and comprehensive coverage of important news topic areas. It’s the kind of job that possibly has never existed until 2008 but will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

Sounds fascinating.

Eric Berlin writes about the differences between Friendfeed and TechMeme.

Therefore, perhaps we can say that Techmeme aggregates what’s important about tech and Internet news and easily provides links to surrounding conversations. It’s really a new kind of online newspaper, and a pretty terrific one. And Friendfeed is an aggregator of lots of stuff, of what people are reading and writing and sharing and looking at and listening to.

Friendfeed is the modern version of a newswire while TechMeme is a constantly updated newspaper. If you have the time to scan through the real-time updates of everyone’s lifestream, FriendFeed is going to get you the news faster. If you’d rather let the editorial algorithms do the heavy lifting, TechMeme is the way to go.

Which do you prefer and why?