Chris Pirillo captured a picture right around the same time that Maryam gave me her “talking Technorati” pickup line.

Just saw that Dave Winer just posted the full text of Bill Gates’ “birthday memo/email” and Ray Ozzie’s memo/email to the company.

These memos are two more reasons why I enjoy working at Microsoft.

Oh, boy, Memeorandum can be gamed? Um, sorta, but only by hacking the humans who participate in Memeorandum’s link analysis. Just by linking to this article, which already is on Memeorandum, I am gaming it.

Pete Cashmore says that humans are better, because they can’t be gamed. I say BS!!! We are gamed regularly and in many ways more transparently than an algorithm can be (an algorithm is just more consistent).

To game Memeorandum you must talk people who are on Memeorandum’s seed list into gaming the system. It’s NOT THE ALGORITHM THAT YOU ARE GAMING. It’s the humans!!! Got it?

Guess what? Five of us could get together and game it. You can only do that a few times, though and if Gabe notices you are doing it you’ll get pulled out of the database and where will that lead you then?

But, here’s how Memeorandum works and why gaming it isn’t very likely (and why there is almost zero spam on Memeorandum):

Gabe Rivera started with about 1,000 bloggers. He hand selected them. Then he built his algorithm to look at linking behavior. Depending on the day it might take as little as one link to get onto Memeorandum (I’ve noticed that sometimes as soon as I link to something it gets on there, but only rarely). So, to game it you should wait for a slow news day.

The real trick you should think about there? Write a sexy headline. That catches more blogger’s eyes and gets them to link to you.

Here, what’s sexier?

Yahoo’s maps rock
or
Yahoo’s new pretty maps doomed (and so are Microsoft’s)

???

The second headline was at the top of Memeorandum for almost an entire day, so I know which one caught your eye.

Then, you need to write a bit of length. Oh, and stay on topic. Again, both things that a human would use to judge whether a post is worth reading. Short one-line posts don’t make it onto Memeorandum (which is why Dave Winer rarely appears).

Other tips? Get other bloggers to link to your blog. Remember that bloggers, if they don’t know you, don’t like to be begged for links. Also, write original content that adds value to the world. I find that when I’m just being an echo chamber maiden, like now I’ll only make it underneath a post in Memeorandum, but if I post an original idea or something new that I’ll get on the top of Memeorandum.

All systems can be gamed, though, even human ones. Why do you think we have advertising?

Oh, and if Memeorandum is being gamed, why can’t it be gamed on both of its sites at once? Ever think about that one?