Memeorandum: Does a Diggbot Trump Manual Digg-ing?

From Nick Carr’s Rough Type blog: this review of Memeorandum.  Very relevant for online publishers looking for ways to embrace the blogosphere and build valuable services over it (like Edgeio, which we commented on earlier this week.)  Carr’s critique is partially fair; what he fails to point out is that the manual approach only counts what the crowd has voted for – and the sample is skewed because it only represents people who’re using voting software like Digg.  For proof of this sample bias, check out the top tags on Del.icio.us.  Automated tracking approaches like this are still skewed by people engaged in this new media, but can we presume that these are also the folks whom advertisers will be trying to reach? (Note: the comments on Carr's post also provide a thoughtful critique...)