Inside Memeorandum
Don Dodge had a chat recently with Gabe Rivera on why he started memeorandum.com, how it compares with other news aggregators, and the secret sauce that drives the service. One question Rivera danced around is memeorandum's business model. All he would offer is there are “certain kinds of sponsorships” and “other opportunities” to generate revenue but he did not into specifics. There are probably several routes Rivera could take such as selling banner ads given the service's focus (technology and politics) and its heavy traffic. Rivera could also leverage the memeorandum platform - and the revenue opportunity - by expanding into other sectors (advertising/marketing, automotive, health, travel, sports, etc.) It all comes down how far Rivera wants to commercialize memeorandum and whether a move into advertising would deter users if the interface lost some of its clean look and feel. It's hard not to get the feeling Rivera is taking his time before taking the next move. I suspect he's trying to build a viable business rather than positioning memeorandum for an acquisition by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.
Update: Richard MacManus' interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose can be found here.
