Who is Technorati Trying to Reach

Hi Chris

I totally agree. I used to be a massive fan of Technorati. Thir tools used to set them apart from all of the other blog search services out there. But you're right - recently (although it's been declining in usability for about a year now) the service has become less and less intuitive to use.

For example, their charting service which allowed you to compare keywords and display results on a graph is now a pale comparision to icerocket or blogpulse.

Technorati is at risk of losing its own 'authority'...

Thank you! I was obviously late to the "technorati" party, but to me at least, it seems someone has fallen asleep at the internet wheel.

Oh and they don't seem to filter out "splogs" and data-mined "keyword" sites. Not very authoritative metric of "authority" IMO

I think Technorati has fallen into the trap of trying to do too much at the expense of its core business. It's become like the cell phone that does everything but reliably make and receive calls!

I like David Sifry; I interviewed him on my blog about a year ago, and I believe in his commitment to client service excellence. If you tell him your concerns directly, you WILL get a response from him.

Yeah, they've been pretty useless since early 2007.

When people would ask me how to find "good blogs," I used to suggest a search on Technorati to get them started.

Now, I send them to Alltop.

What a relief. I hear such great things about Technorati, but whenever I go there, I walk away with nothing useful. Google blog search has it beat when it comes to looking for blog content.

Yeah, I haven't used Technorati in months. Google Blog Search is just so easy and convenient.

Agreed on all counts, Chris. And, it's sad.

I read an interesting post this morning about using Wordpress Tags with Technorati - http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/30261

I now use it simply to inflate the supposed importance of an unimportant blog- like mine!

Nice summation of the current state of affairs. But the real question is what do they do to fix it?

Chris

Chris,
Thanks for posting this. Our focus over the prior 5 months has been on organizing the important blog posts of the day into major categories. I blogged about the percolator when we first released it in December, it's something I'd been wanting us to build for a few years and last fall, I actually got a chance to do it. Since then, it's been improved a whole lot with more data sources, improved categorization, grouping together related posts and identifying what the important posts are everyday in Technology, Politics, Sports, Entertainment, Business and Life. I really encourage you and your readers to let us know what what changes we've made that you dislike and which ones you liked. We're a small company serving a huge community with a large, volatile, open data set but fundamentally, we want to provide a service that is of value to you and your readers and your feedback helps make that happen. Feel free to contact me directly at ikallen@technorati.com
Thanks,
-Ian

I still use technorati although I use it for a very specific search term. I also limit my search to only english language but expand it to any authority. My goal is to keep a daily track on my specific subject from within the blogosphere. I use Google news search for general news sites.

Also I've bookmarked the top level "Posts" view for my term search. I found when they expanded their service searching under "Blogs" was somehow limiting my blog search. This very well could have been user error or developmental/transition phase with Technorati. But either way I've not spent time to figure out whether I really want to be using the more specific "Blogs" view. Actually I have NO IDEA what "Posts" or "Blogs" is supposed to mean?!?

I do have a few usability items that would imporove my experience. First on the "Posts" View, the third iteam is not a post but a video banner with matching results to my term. But if I wanted videos I would simply go to the tab marked "videos". So I prefer to have my limit screen space show what I actually requested. Second the title for post summary although is the title of the blog post is linked to some Technorati page when gives me nothing I want. Instead I have to click on the much smaller, much lighter url underneath the title. These should be reversed as the title should take me to the actually post. These are my two biggest UI grips I have with Technorati.

Broken and out of touch. It is sad. The irony is that when I talk to folks about what they'd like in a replacement -- they're looking for simple, sleek, and reliable. As I recall that's the direction from which Technorati came.

At the day job last week, I was trying to explain to a colleague how to subscribe to a tag search. But when I popped onto the Technorati site, I had a hell of a time actually even finding Technorati's tag search tool. It was, to use one of your words, "hidden" away somewhere in the site.

I actually more or less gave up on Technorati about six months ago. I seldom, if ever, add Technorati tags to my blog posts, while Google Blog Search has become my blog search engine of choice.

It's a shame. I find myself paying less attention to it on a daily basis.

@Ian - very cool that you came on the blog to comment, and thanks for that. At least you're listening.

For the rest of us, Ian left an email address. We should give some pointers as to the service we used to use, and how we wish the product would work for us.

Then again, the more I thought about it, my wonder was: how will they make money? It's an ad play, right? So, can the suggestions we make give them enough page views to get ads?

My answer: yes.

Ooooh, did my Tweet about Technorati inspire this Chris Brogan post? Score! I had "totally" forgotten about Technorati until yesterday morning (http://twitter.com/alizasherman/statuses/786589641) when I came across the logo in a ShareIt feature. Oh yeah, I thought, Technorati was once so cool. I had an account there before I had "consolidated" my social networking and "Web 2.0" accounts. Today, they all were under Aliza Sherman or Cybergrrl Oh - on Technorati, I called myself "Bloggirl."

After claiming about 5 blogs, I couldn't figure out where go from there or the value to me as a Web 2.0 enthusiast/consultant (yes, I am cringing saying Web 2.0 but you know what I mean) so I just let the account stagnate.

Went back yesterday, claimed another blog, and then couldn't figure out "what next" so I'm glad to see this post to hear what others are saying/feeling/thinking about the long lost Technorati.

I never joined the Technorati party because by the time I joined it, it was too late. I mainly now use Stats and Google Blog Search to find out about new blogs and who's talking about me.

I'm with Chris; Technorati no longer is a useful tool for me. Long ago I set up searches & added them to my feed reader so I could see when someone linked to me, or wrote about specific things of interest to my clients. Now I basically get a feed of splogs, and periodically the searches vomit up tons of links to me from a a year or so ago. And when I got to the site, it's basically a mess of stuff of little use to me.

I understand the company's desire to add new things like the percolator, but it does seem to be coming at the expense of the basic tools.

I agree with yall. It is very useless