Comments on: Who is Technorati Trying to Reach

By: Manori Money

Manori Money — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:39:11 +0000

I agree with yall. It is very useless

By: John

John — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:52:26 +0000

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.

By: Jonathan Bloom

Jonathan Bloom — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:34:29 +0000

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.

By: Aliza Sherman

Aliza Sherman — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:47:59 +0000

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.

By: chrisbrogan

chrisbrogan — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:40:04 +0000

@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.

By: Geoff Livingston

Geoff Livingston — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:35:22 +0000

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

By: Bryan Person, BryanPerson.com

Bryan Person, BryanPerson.com — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:51:57 +0000

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.

By: Liz Strauss

Liz Strauss — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:26:31 +0000

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.

By: Ed M

Ed M — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:59:04 +0000

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.

By: Ian Kallen

Ian Kallen — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:02:14 +0000

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