Used to be that most of their fulminations generally went unanswered, because:

1) Techmeme creator Gabe Rivera generally keeps to himself, at least in the physical world.

2) Rivera created Techmeme using an algorithm that was supposed to automatically suss out which stories were most important, using a link-based hierarchy similar to Google’s (GOOG).

But dudes who are still unhappy with Techmeme (and yes, I mean dudes; with a couple rare exceptions that prove the rule–hello, boss–this is unfortunately a Man’s Man’s Man’s World) have someone they can vent at/to. Meet Megan McCarthy, the former Valleywag writer Rivera hired late last year to add a human’s touch to the site. Headline for his blog post announcing the move: “Guess what? Automated news doesn’t quite work.”

That doesn’t mean that Techmeme has abandoned the algorithm–just that Rivera wants McCarthy tweaking the site and making sure that important/useful/interesting stories bubble up. Or that’s their argument, anyway. Sounds right to me.

If you’re at South by Southwest this weekend, you can chat McCarthy up yourself–she’s the very tall, very pleasant woman who seems to know an awful lot of people. Or you can watch this clip, where she bravely agreed to let me hold a Flip camera in front of her face.

Important (at least to some people) addendum to my interview: When I argue that Rivera “favors” certain kinds of coverage, I mean just that–that he’s more interested in, say, Web 2.0 news than he is in gadget coverage, and that he’s set up Techmeme to reflect that.

In her post late last week that I missed (I was traveling and therefore not aware of her cruel, cruel taunts), she pointed with dread to a recent promise I made to try out a new wearable camera I saw at the TechCrunch40 conference earlier in the week, a la Justin Kan of Justin.tv.

Writes McCarthy:

One thing to keep in mind about this new development: Swisher, unlike Kan, is tiny–about 5’2″, if that. Any hat-camera she wears will be eye-level with Silicon Valley’s chest. We look forward to watching her conversations with Walt Mossberg’s sweater.”

First off, I am 5’2″ (really!!) and not a “little person” as one VC once called me.

Second, Walt never wears sweaters.

And third: Chest-level was the plan, if you must know!

Silicon Valley’s chest=big traffic!

Or as Valleywag overlord Owen Thomas added to the post in note wherein he also harasses my innocent employee, Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski:

Rowr.

(Megan had asked for some advice about the fine art of covering parties–that is, making an interesting story where there is not one–since I started my career covering parties for the Washington Post.)

Thomas, whom I have know for many years, is the new managing editor of Valleywag, a gig he got in July after many years as an editor and writer at Business 2.0 magazine.

Here is a talk with him about the state of the blog and Valleywag’s focus under him, as well as an appearance by McCarthy, and more info after the jump:

Thomas has a lot of digital experience, too, as a contributor to the legendarily snarky Suck site, and he was an early convert in the mainstream media to the inevitability of the digital space. His last job at Business 2.0 was as online editor for the Time Inc. title.

Thomas’s predecessor was Gawker publisher and impresario Nick Denton, in fact, who took over writing the blog after he sacked its first editor, Nick Douglas (who still writes posts regularly for Valleywag). Soon enough, Denton fired himself and hired Thomas.

In his post on the move, Denton said: “You see, Thomas isn’t just a veteran of business journalism, with excellent sources in the tech industry (most of which he will burn).”

And indeed, so far Thomas has been busy slapping around the denizens of Silicon Valley (including me for being too nice to Yahoo U.S. sales head Dave Karnstedt) with the newfound vigor of a man freed from the mainstream media.

Not everyone likes it, finding some posts too snarky and cutting, but everyone does seem to read it.