“The idea that authority is best transmitted by a coarse-grained gesture like linking is bankrupted by the sheer volume of gaming that is emerging.” – Steve Gillmor

Back in the early days of Cullect – I was trying to figure out a way to programmatically provide a meaningful excerpt of an article. In the end – I decided that any solution would just be trying to guess which words and phrases were meaningful to any given reader. It’s easier to not guess – and our brains are really good at scanning for interestingness. So, to give your internal scanning as much info as possible – Cullect displayed everything it could.

It feels like more publications are showing less; headline, link, maybe an 1 sentence excerpt. Twitter & Delicious being the worst offenders. Facebook, Pinboard, and other publishers (traditional & otherwise) are fast followers.

I’d like to see more publishers display more by default – not less. Most of them are already making editorial decisions on placement – let’s go all the way. If this really is the most important story of right now – why are any other stories even visible?