Gabe Rivera introduced an editor to his memetrackers earlier this week. From now on, Techmeme and his other sites will not only be edited by an algorithm but also by an human editor.

We think Gabe’s memetrackers are a great way to get news in a really smart way. Algorithms are powerful but the human touch will quite probably make memetrackers even better. But is a staff of editors the future?

Social interaction augmenting memetracking seems to be something even Google is considering. As recently pointed out by VentureBeat, one reason for Google showing strong interest in aquiring Digg could be the possibility of enhancing Google News with Digg’s social filter.

Broadstuff.com wrote an interesting blog post last week about social vs algorithm filtering in news. The conclusion was that Techmeme (in the sense of algorithm filtering) is something really powerful but that Twitter has become another, more social, way to get notified about (and discuss) news. Twitter has the ability to filter both personal and local, but also professional and other highly relevant news for you.

So I am now watching with fascination to see how the Algorithm filter (Techmeme) and the Social Network Filter (Twitter) vie for influence on my (and others’) attention span in the future.

At Twitter, the human touch from many people is the social filter. The question is if memetrackers would’nt be even better with something similar. Probably they would, is the answer. We think memetrackers could be improved with the help of both algorithms and many enthusiastic people. And we think Gabe is on the right path when he now introduces an editor to his memetrackers.

In the future, when there’s memetrackers for all topics for all your interests, it’ll probably be social filters and not hired professional editors. But the first step is taken and we have only seen very little of the potential in memetrackers.