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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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This is fresh?

The chatter about Technorati‘s rapidly diminishing credibility continues to intensify. Dan York talked about it on last Thursday’s FIR, prompting Joe Thornley to write about it, which in turn prompted Neville to write about it. Dan revisited the subject on today’s show, leading Neville and me to discuss it further.

After recording, I took a quick look at my own listing on Technorati, and found that the first five posts linking to my blog were posted 14,119 days ago. In case you don’t have your calculator handy, that’s 38-1/2 years ago. Blogging is older than we thought. (See the screen shot at the end of the post.)

Actually, the first item listed was posted July 6 of this year. The fourth was posted August 11. All this despite the fact that Technorati showed the results as “sorted by freshness.”

This is far from the worst problem Technorati is having, and doesn’t even begin to touch on the issues raised by people like Chris Brogan about the validity of Technorati’s methodology. Taken all together, these problems present a real opportunity for someone to step in and provide the kind of metrics Technorati does—and nobody else—or for Technorati to get its act together and reclaim its leadership position.

Shel Holtz

08/28/08 | 6 Comments | This is fresh?

Comments

  • 1.Just a question: What is Technorati?

    Ok, I know it's a bit harsh, but honestly it became irrelevant.
    I asked about Technorati on Twitter and Plurk, and the general consensus was that Technorati just does not matter. No one uses it.

    It was useful and fun in the past, but lately it is just dead.

    Now, that was my take on it, I want everyone to jump in and prove me wrong. I would like to see that Technorati is still alive.

    Roland Hesz | August 2008 | G?d

  • 2.Roland, until somebody else offers rankings and something like authority, I'll have no choice but to keep using Technorati. I don't use it alone, though; in fact, I usually start with Google's blog search or IceRocket (or both), and when I find a useful blog, I'll check it on Technorati. Even though the data is highly questionable, an authority level of 2,000 tells me something, even if it's off by 500 one way or the other. Technorati is a lot like the old line about democracy: it's the worst possible system except for all the rest.

    Shel Holtz | August 2008 | Concord, CA

  • 3."these problems present a real opportunity for someone to step in and provide the kind of metrics Technorati does"

    Shel, I agree with this. And that's the opening that I think AideRSS is moving to fill with their PostRank algorithm.

    Joseph Thornley | August 2008 | Canada

  • 4.I personally found that the authority ranking really does not mean anything. Found really good things on blogs with authority 0-40, and found really useless things on blogs with authority 1000+.
    I stopped looking at metrics as they usually don't tell me how useful the content is.

    But I hear you, there really is no such service I know of, and if someone uses authorities and such to measure a blog, then it's the only place for him/her.

    Thanks Shel. :)

    Roland Hesz | August 2008 | Hungary

  • 5.Roland, I agree completely that a high authority doesn't ensure good content. It is, however, an indication of how widely read the blog is, which can be important in identifying candidates for outreach. A library blogger with an authority of 500 is going to reach more readers than one with an authority of 2!

    Shel Holtz | August 2008 | Concord, CA

  • 6.another post (and even more insight on FIR) that makes me shake my head, shudder and kvetch.

    Until there is really something comparable, we all seem to be stuck checking it out and hoping that our ranking isn't too "affected" by whatever algorhythm problems they keep encountering.

    I wish Google would just buy them and fix this ;)

    Mitch Joel - Twist Image | August 2008 | Montreal, Quebec

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