What is Technorati Anyway?
by Marianne Richmond

I have posted about the difficulties with Technorati tags and indexing more than I would like to even think about...my problem with non-working tag bookmarklets (yes, these very same bookmarklets worked on other blogs....just not on mine) seemed to finally be solved by using Performancing.  I have also found Janice Myint to be very responsive each time I have emailed about the indexing issue.

Having said that, I agree with the statement "Technorati is still broken" that is appearing on many blogs in one form or another.  Speaking specifically about the two places I blog, here and as one of the four editors of the blogging and social media blog at blogher (Zadi Diaz,Debi Jones ,and Nicole Simon are writing about video blogging, mobile blogging, and blogging respectively) I have to say that there are problems with  tracking updates,  tagging, pinging, and even the number of blogs per url.

For Resonance Partnership blog, I found two listings in my own favorites:
                Resonance Partnership...Updated 28 days ago and Resonance Partnership by marianne richmond.,Updated  19 hours ago.

Blogher is listed as one of my favorites and on my list, Technorati shows updates 9 hours ago; 9 seconds ago would be a closer guess. As Laura Scott says, "there are 1046 members, 2737 posts and 1805 links. There are constant updates.

Further, I keep a Technorati Chart on my blog that is supposed to automatically update posts tagged blogher.
The graph,  Posts tagged Blogher per day for the last 30 days shows blogher tags declining. That is difficult to believe with the number of Blogher blogs and posts increasing.
Technorati Chart
Get your own chart!


Laura Scott posts the question, "If you built it, and Technorati doesn't track you, will they come?" and of course for Blogher the answer is "yes". For individual bloggers who are constantly fighting the battle of the tag, the Technorati model is a bit more problematic. As Laura says in reference to the new Technorati Favorites, " Technorati's latest popularity measure--which is very undemocratic, tends to mainstream traffic, and generally rewards the already-successful."

In fact, in a matter of several days, Technorati first gave us favorites and then after we listed our favorites, we got to find out who was the most favorite...

So to link (no pun intended) two points of this post together: #1 Technorati has fundamental problems with its basic features, tracking and indexing, but instead of fixing the basics they keep adding new features, favorites, most favorites and authority which, by the way in case you didn't notice,  keeps enhancing the dance cards of those all ready dancing the most;

#2 the question of giving Technorati the authority to be the arbiter of the blogosphere  because it seems to have one BIG problem that we have all experienced: Is It ACCURATE? Is It BROKEN? Did it ever work? This is the results of Google search for "Technorati is Broken." This is the result of a Google search for "Technorati is not accurate." Most importantly, what do we experience on our own magic middle blogs? How can something so apparently inaccurate measure authority? And what is Technorati anyway?

Tag, you're it....
Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

 

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

Submitted by Marianne Richmond (view blog) on Wed, 03/01/2006 - 23:59
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Comments

 

Now this is scary -- Janice

Now this is scary -- Janice Myint is the (yes very polite but not much help) support person helping me with continuing issues too. Does Technorati have just ONE PERSON doing this? No wonder it's broken! No wonder nothing gets fixed!
Alanna Kellogg, The Veggie Evangelist

Submitted by Alanna Kellogg on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 06:23
 

I believe she is the only person..

and it is indeed scary...for her as well as us! Probably there are a few more people in the "new products" department.

Marianne

Submitted by Marianne Richmond on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 16:43
 

Hi Marianne

I see that you've been out to Successful Blog and you know that I've had signficant problems with my blogs. Are they broken? Yep almost as broken as AT&T still is, and I fear with some of the same "We have a monopoly think." I'm not sure why the guys--and in this case,

I do mean men--keep so quiet about it. I've had David Sifry's placating emails until I posted an open letter. Then I posted another one and he came out to comment--We're doing bells and whistles and fixing it too was what he said.

That's why I tried the push to get everyone to link to Janice's blog--to send a message we want it FIXED. Truthfully the are the only real game in town.

Why do I care? Sometimes I use their statistics for credibility data. I believe they're going to get bought in the next two years--I think that's why the worry is about bells and whistles and Sifry's CEO-style Blogosphere sales pitch, and not about delivering customers service.

When they get bought, they will probably be MORE powerful not less.

Janice is our only hope. It's amazing that she's got all of us emailing her on this stuff and we all think she's doing so well.

Liz

Submitted by lizsun on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 06:41
 

Well, there was one positive...

outcome for me for the technomess...I found your blog and enjoyed it a lot. I thought the link to Janet thing was a great idea! It said on the annoucement of her arrival post that she has a black belt....so maybe she is tough enough for the job.

I posted a comment on Dave Sifry's blog in December after getting no response from Technorati support for months and months...he did not respond even then.

I don't think anyone is expecting perfection, or that I think I would have thousands of links if only Technorati worked...its just would be nice to know that what was there was mostly accurate and that there was some sense of "we hear you and we are not going to add new features until we fix the ones we have."

The absolute worst for customer service though is Typepad.

Submitted by Marianne Richmond on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 16:56
 

Here's a Technorati tag for you

Well, you *could* always use the Technorati tag - tell Niall Kennedy that Koan says "hi, have you fixed anything yet?"

Seriously, Marianne, in my opinion you hit the nail on the head - they keep releasing new features in the hope that it will hide the fact that, fundamentally, Technorati doesn't do what they say it does - it does *not* accurately index all the posts it says it does - it does *not* consistently return all of the posts that are tagged with a specific tag - it does *not* provide a definitive picture of what it says it does - let alone the fact that, really, what do inbound links prove?

To me, as a service, it's worth exactly what I pay for it - nothing.

Blog: Multidimensional.Me

Submitted by Koan on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 08:42
 

It is all very ironic...

as a service to you for instance, Technorai has no value; From many perspectives, its data because it is so innacurate does not really have value; Yet....its market value? Priceless is probably not the right answer.
Marianne

Submitted by Marianne Richmond on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 17:04
 

"What's the point of technorati?"

Gee, so many people getting up in arms about technorati... while I think the majority of bloggers exist unaware, or atleast outside, the world of technorati.

And, if we can exist happily without using tags, why is it so important to many. Still haven't gotten an answer to that question that doesn't make the whole thing sound like a popularity contest.

Debra
A Stitch In Time
Simple Still Life

Submitted by debra roby on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 09:34
 

Great question...

the answer probably lies somewhere within what one's goals are in blogging...or in being popular!
Marianne

Submitted by Marianne Richmond on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 17:11
 

On Tagging

One of the things that is not clear from the documentation on Technorati's site is that in order for your manually inputed tags to work right, they need to appear in the body of text that appears on the main page of your blog. Technorati spiders the main page of your blog, not the individual entry pages. I've written some of the technical aspects of tagging up here.

Elise Bauer
Simply Recipes
Learning Movable Type

Submitted by Elise Bauer on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 11:13
 

Alternative?

Are they any alternatives that we can use instead of Technorati? Has anyone found anything else that serves the same functions?

Submitted by Sarah on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 11:15
 

Some alternatives

IceRocket is very much like Technorati, but without the extra widgets. They seem very good at crawling sites, but none of these things are perfect. A lot of people like Feedster. I found their interface hard to personalize, and gave up. There's another service called PubSub, where you can put in a topic alert and PubSub watches new content coming in for it, and lets you know. In other words, as they put it, you "search the future."

Then there are the bloggertainment trackers like BlogShares and TTLB Ecosystem.

I think the drawback for all of these is that they are centralized. The internet is bigger than any of them can reflect accurately or effectively. I think it's only a matter of time before somebody with deeper pockets does this. Someone like Google.

What's more, having one centralized clearing house makes their "top 100" list that much narrower. The whole point of BlogHer is to decentralize that recommended reading process with dozens of trusted voices. The limitations of the Big Numbers Game are all too apparent otherwise.

Laura
· BlogHer website admin
· pingVision: Drupal theming, design, development and hosting
· personal blog

Submitted by Laura Scott on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 17:34
 

Exactly, Sarah. That's the

Right on, Sarah. That's the right question. Why try to appease a busted system with blog template tricks and Technorotty specific tagging rituals? There are a number of blog search tools.

Blogpulse by for example has a woman at the helm and I love their long time focus on conversations along with personalities or specific blogs. Many of the feeds occupying my feed reader these days are topic based rather than individual bloggers. Pubsub is one tool that allows you tap into topics in real time. Feedster included Blogher links long before Technorati did which seems to finally be picking those up today.

There are alternatives, and it's time to promote them as Technorati has it's fans. I'm glad you took the big picture approach and asked this question. Thanks.


Debi Jones
Contributing Editor, Blogging and Social Media
Feed your mobile jones

Submitted by mobilejones on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 12:56
 

Technorati and Tagging

Since Technorati does not work as well as it could, I do not tag my blog entries. I tag my entries by bookmarking my entry on del.icio.us using tags.

Submitted by emily04 on Mon, 03/06/2006 - 16:30
 

To tag for del.icio.us

FYI, in case nobody's noticed, anyone can tag any blog or forum post for del.icio.us by clicking on the icon at the bottom of the post. Same for digg and reddit.

The Technorati icon will show what Technorati is tracking as blogs that reference the post in question.

Laura
· BlogHer website admin
· pingVision: Drupal theming, design, development and hosting
· personal blog

Submitted by Laura Scott on Mon, 03/06/2006 - 18:45