Hey! you've been following ths same stuff as me! ;-) and if it doesn't make ya laugh, it can give you a serious headache...

First, Arrington cracks me up--I thought his take on the whole thing was a tad self-righteous. Then again, I sometimes think Arrington and I have similar traits that way, so I don't take his inventory too much...

And the Facebook thing! Kara's post had me in stitches--but the thing is, she's *very* right about that. I chalk it up to the Nerd Factor. I used to know a bunch of young guys who, when about the same age as the Facebook guys, had a video game company. The only woman was the office manager who was something like a geeky momma bear, who went home every day at 5 and left the guys there to party on. When you leave a bunch of guys alone, they tend to do weird things, eat very bad food, and indulge in habits that would make most women's hair stand on end (like, not bathe for a couple of days straight...and leave Playboy magazines open on the floor.) So, whether it's tacit neglect of women, or intentional, may be difficult to figure out--but you might bet that some of these guys are unfortunately hanging the "no girls allowed" sign on the door because they wouldn't know what to do if a woman invaded their space....

But still....as far as Technorati goes, I've been surprised the number of posts on the story have been touting the superiority of Google's blog search--which never gives authority nor links. When I questioned someone about that, he brought up the trackback thing. Ah, the "T" word! Trackbacks are great for post links, but not permalinks....but I think some folks really don't care all that much about permalinks anymore because of RSS subscriptions.

yikes! things have changed!

Tish Grier
blogger/consultant/writer
currently with Assignment Zero--blogging at
the Constant Observer

My authority wavers constantly -- usually only by two or three links, but still...(and it makes me do a quick check to see if anyone's "dropped" me, or I have done something that would cause a linker to unlink me. ;))

Hey, a couple weeks ago there was a snafu that ranked all blogs #1, did you catch it? (Did you take a screenshot of your #1 blog? I did.)

Ah, Technorati - how fondly I remember thee - not. For claiming an authority you never had - for basking in an acclaimed adulation you never warranted (but never refuted, nor succeeded in living up to) - for never fixing one piece of your broken infrastructure before rushing in the "next big thing". Maybe these changes presage a new era - or maybe they are the death knell. Apart from the employees who have lost their livelihood (and the remaining ones who may yet lose theirs) - does it really matter?

Whatever passing interest I had in Technorati (the company, or its "algorithms") didn't survive long past a disingenuous (can we say "misleading" - can we say "incorrect" - can we say "barefaced piece of corporate shilling") response by a Technorati employee to concerns voiced by myself during the opening session at the inaugural BlogHer conference.

The only surprise, to me, is that Technorati is still a topic of conversation, at all...

The candle may have burned out long before the legend ever will....All those TOP 100, TOP 150 lists that pop up daily are driven by Technorati, Blogline subscriptions (does anyone use Bloglines anymore?) and other so called algorithms based upon them. Go figure.

Marianne Richmond
resonancepartnership

To kp above:

links do drop off/out of your accumulated links on Technorati. The difference is between post links (inside posts) and permalinks (on blogrolls).

The thing used to be to get "A-listers" like Scoble, or Jarvis, or other guys (only a few women like Dooce and Halley Suitt) like that, to link to you in their blogrolls. Post links were great for driving some traffic, but blogroll links were forever. If you emailed A-listers for links and they didn't know you, that was called "link whoring."

But let's face it--the landscape of the blogosphere has changed, and even the A-list changed mightily from when it was the who's who of white male blogdom. Further, the perpetuation of the idea of the A-list came from Blogebrity (I don't even know if anyone looks at that any more, or if it's still around--not when there's ValleyWag and other Nick Denton properties.)

If you look at the top blogs now, most of them are group blogs (Huffington, BoingBoing, Kos, etc.) It's mighty hard for one person to churn out the requisite amount of original content, torqued with top-notch SEO, in one day to keep feeding the search engines. So, group blogs, blog networks, etc. end up coming out on top more often than not--which, again, is a far, far cry from what was going on 3-4 years ago when we first saw Technorati.

Still, they ain't great, but they're the only ones who are giving us rank in relation to other bloggers. Then again, is rank even important in an RSS and trackback world?

Tish Grier
blogger/consultant/writer
currently with Assignment Zero--blogging at
the Constant Observer