Is TechMeme Relevant Outside the A-Listers?

The A-list bloggers love to talk about TechMeme, whether they’re talking about which one of them is on it, or worried about leaderboard changes, or how to game it, or how to reverse engineer it.

I wonder… outside of the folks who routinely show up on TechMeme, does it matter?  Someone on my Twitter stream recently commented they were talking to someone from the Wall Street Journal and mentioned TechMeme and the guy had no idea what it was.

When you consider that most of the material on TechMeme is from major tech blogs (already being followed by those who follow tech blogs), I really wonder how much value is in the site outside of its use by A-listers as a measure of their relative influence.