How Technorati Gave Away Their Special Sauce
I used to use Technorati to find compelling blog posts to share and comments. It was rather convenient to be able to go to one spot and find out what people were saying in blogs around the globe and to easily search. One of the most compelling features, for me, was that it was an application designed with blogs only in mind.
This morning I was looking a set of compelling blog posts on the anniversary of 9/11. So I fired up my Google Chrome browser and headed over to Techorati. Strangely, the homepage was infested with non-blog newsources such as cnn.com, time,com, etc. The ration of mainstream media to blog posts on the homepage was around 3 to 1, with blogs drawing the short stick.
So I did a search on my topic, and once again, tons of mainstream media results, although they were at least clearly identified, once again my results bore lots of topics from big media.
Part of the problem is that lots of big media is now using blogs as a part of the content strategy. The New York Times is blogging using WordPress MU and many other papers and news channels are as well. Hence they get submitted along with the rest of the unwashed masses. And since they’re big media with big readership, they jump to the top of the authority heap. Authority is one of the measures that Technorati uses to rate your blog – in my case, an authority of 9, which used to be 40+ when I blogged at Vario, and a rating of 705,000 or so, vs. the Vario rating somewhere under 100,000k when I was active there.
I guess blogging has come to the big time and media’s realized it finally. I just wonder if there’s going to be any room for the rest of us when all is said and done.
Resources:
Technorati. Old Tools Don’t Die. They Gather Dust. – Global Neighbourhoods
What’s wrong with Technorati – Neville Hobson
Technorati and Me – Thornley Fallis
3 thoughts on “How Technorati Gave Away Their Special Sauce”
Another problem with Technorati is that it can take up to two weeks for a ping to “take”, so some posts opn 8/11 will only appear on Technorati in two weeks time.
If one wants to see what the news media are saying, one looks at Google. And now if one wants to see what blogs are saying one looks at Google as well. Technorati just takes way too long.
Exactly – although I’ve got problems with the way Google seaches blogs as well – namely everytime I try to search for information in blog search on a certain topic it tells me my behavior looks like a computer virus and shuts me down.
I agree that Technorati is not the best place to track blogs. The way I do this is through eCairn (www.ecairn.com – disclaimer I am connected to these guys).
They have search, and then you can accumulate a list of blogs you track. But on top on this, you can save your searches and they make recommendations on blogs that would be relevant, based on the query itself but also which blogs you retained from that query to start tracking.
If you are into blogs for more than just reading and monitoring, they also provide very extensive functionality for engaging with the blogsphere (as I am doing now), allowing you to track the blogs where you comment, and view the impact over time.
Worth checking…