Delicious founder to show you political bias on Memeorandum

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter and technologist/blogger Any Baio have created a new GreaseMonkey script that displays the political orientation of blogs and news sites on the aggregator site Memeorandum. GreaseMonkey is a Firefox extension that allows users to customize the appearance and functionality of Webpages.

Using an algorithm that scores every blog on Memorandum based on linking activity, this new script colorizes the Website. Those who install the GreaseMonkey script will now see Memeorandum in shades of blue and red. Liberal-leaning blogs are blue and conservative-leaning blogs are red. Darker colors represent stronger biases.

These colors are a reflection of bloggers' linking activity; they may not always represent personal views or biases (liberal bloggers often link to conservative sites and vice-versa). However, this script eliminates the arduous task of reading blog after blog on Memeorandum to find one consistent with one's own views. But then again it could fuel peoples' tendency to avoid dissident view points, which for obvious reasons inhibits intelligence. None the less, this GreaseMonkey script, along with Microsoft Blews (see my previous post) is evidence of an emerging form of aggregation intended to help people identify political biases.

To install this application, visit Andy Baio's blog at http://waxy.org/2008/10/memeorandum_colors/

Microsoft Blews: Software program to rate political media bias

This is not the typical Unbiased Tabloid blog post. It doesn't analyze any media messages nor does it expose any bias. Instead, it serves to inform you of an innovative news aggregator that identifies the political orientation (or bias) of news articles.

Microsoft Blews is a software program in development that uses political blogs to categorize news stories as either conservative or liberal. These categorizations are based on the number of "right" or "left" blog links to a story. Blews also determines the "emotional charge" present in the blogospheres' discussion of the news topic.

"BLEWS achieves this goal by digesting and analyzing a real-time feed of political-blog posts, " says Microsoft.

This feed is provided by the Live Labs Social Media platform.

In addition to identifying the "political orientation" of news stories, Blews strives to create a more balanced view, with “see the view from the other side” functionality. This enables a reader to compare different views on the same story from different sides of the political spectrum.


Blews could be highly useful in informing political perspectives. It could be the first in a number of increasingly advanced aggregators with the ability to determine the ideological basis of news stories, and sort them on that basis. Or it could flop. What do you think?