I’m often asked where I get my tech news, and here’s the breakdown –somewhat in the order that I check. They each have different purposes.

1) TechMeme.com: Although sometimes a fishbowl or echo chamber, news breaks fast here and voices and opinions quickly resonate. Not all are valuable, but after time you learn who to read, and who to ignore. I tend to ignore the very negative and pessimistic people (I’m sure you know who I’m talking about). Sometimes it’s great to hear multiple opinions on one page very quickly.

2) Digg.com: While sometimes slower than Techmeme, it can be interesting as the weight of votes can determine popularity –since it takes time for users to vote, some time can be lost during the democratization process.

3) My Feedreader(s): Im watching my Google IG feedreader for general feeds (as I like to quickly zoom over titles, and those I’ve visited are purple) it can quickly save time. I also use bloglines for more specific purposes relating to my job. I have MyYahoo, Google reader, but I don’t use them as much.

4) Emails and IM: Friends and Marketers email me interesting things, such as news breaking, or request to blog about stuff. It depends on my mood or time of day if I’ll respond.

5) Email Newsletters: Someone has subscribed me (probaly becuase my email addresses are public and easy to find) to many web marketing and internet marketing newsletters like mediapost, and a variety of others. These tend to be a bit slower than what I mentioned above however they’ve removed much of the clutter and are sometimes validation of a story.

6) Traditional Newsites: I use sites like News.com, slashdot (not really too traditional) Wsj, SF chron, and a variety of others for tech news.

7) Magazines: I have subscriptions to Business 2.0. Forbes, and Wired. Each has a different flavor and can offer a unique perspective to trends –I don’t think of them as news, really more of a report.

Other: whatever else I hear about, word of mouth or newspaper or even TV.

I think it’s interesting I get much of my news and information from opinions and people I trust before traditional publications. How about you?