On 7th December 2005, thanks to a Mr Ricardo Galli, a new Web 2.0 concept arrived in Spain – Menéame.  Similar to the American Digg, the site works thanks to Internet users’ votes for articles which they find interesting, curious or fun.  Or so is the idea…

The site is dogged by claims of bias, unfair voting and fake results.  Said unreliability has come about because of the tendencies of some users to mass vote articles based on their subject or author, rather than because of the quality of the pieces themselves.  Another problem faced by Menéame is the large and powerful groups being formed within the website.  The members of these groups will vote other group members’ articles and nothing else, consequently meaning that their news pieces are always guaranteed a good number of votes, whether they are vote-worthy or not.  Another unfortunate trend is how people are beginning to mass vote articles negatively, when the articles are of a certain theme – an example being what happens to articles containing information about the iPhone.  These articles attract many negative votes because of particular groups of people who are angry at the excess of news linked to the revolutionary Apple.

Menéame is actively putting a stop to such practices however, by docking the Karma – Menéame’s currency of choice – of members who appear to indulge in group voting and persecuting those who mass vote for particular articles and hence cheat their way to the top.  By recording user history, Menéame now knows if a user is voting only for particular authors or particular themes.  By applying stricter rules, Menéame should become more like Digg, where good articles go up and bad articles go down.

In spite of its teething problems, the website continues to grow strongly, attracting votes from big names such as Martín Varsavsky.  The pressing Hispanic-Argentine businessman and founder of Fon and Jazztel took capital in both 2006 and 2007 – a vote of confidence which shows that, especially when its problems are overcome, this is a website which will continue to rise to the top.

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