Yes I’ve bitched about Technorati, but as with most customer complaints it’s because I care, I want them to do better. Kind of like the report card I used to get at school “karl could do much better if he just applied himself”, I feel the same way about Technorati. After writing my article about Technorati I started coming across others in similar veins, Read/WriteWeb’s was particularly insightful and poignant. Now some people think it’s over and google has won, but I don’t believe the market is that small, and I think there are enough bloggers out there that want and need a service like Technorati, so I thought it appropriate to try and start a meme that goes beyond the usual minutae of 7 random things about you, and focused on what Technorati could do right, and what would you pay for.
A couple of people have raised the $20+ per year pro-account model that Flickr uses, so what would you like to see in a Technorati Pro-Account?
Here are mine:
- Merging domain names of claimed blogs, I’m sick of having two scores for experiencecurve.com and blog.experiencecurve.com and i’m sure any wordpress and typepad folks would appreciate that one
- A more meaningful multi-metric “authority” measure, who cares how many linked in the last 6 months, all that measures is link baiting
- Real blog categorization and vertical blog scoreboards, Boing Boing is not in the same ball park as TechCrunch, or Web-Strategist, or Marketing Profs Daily fix, so lets move on from the top 10K
- If I have a pro account my blog should get priority indexing
- Track comments as well as trackbacks
- Take the lead in establishing engagement metrics
- Help people build “top ten blog” lists save everyone reinventing it all the time
Those are my suggestions, so if you had a Pro-Technorati account what features would you like to see? If you do respond to this post use the tag “save-technorati”. So i’ll just tag a few instigators and see if this has any legs, how about it David Armano, Joseph Jaffe, Robert Scoble, Hugh MacLeod, Greg Verdino, Danial Rivong, Rohit Bhargava, Mack Collier.
Hey you don’t have to agree either, if you think it’s over for Technorati I’d be interested in that perspective as well, was it a bubble popping or a company that can do better.
UPDATE:
- Here’s Kris Hoet’s list on his blog ‘Cross The Breeze
14 Comments
Hey Karl – Same here. Wrote my own Technorati opportunity list a while ago and in the comments I did get some feedback about upcoming stuff. That was before people got laid off and Sifry left though:
http://crossthebreeze.com/2007/07/31/technorati-wheres-the-innovation/
But hear you on the comments. They’re in line with what I think they could do to make it better, and I hope they do… I really do hope they improve soon.
Cool Kris, you were way ahead of the curve there
I’ve added a link in the post, that way we can aggregate feature ideas. I notice you had also suggested the pro-account, totally.
I think there is still a role for specialised blog searching. The Google blog search doesn’t do it for me … it certainly does not have the “social” features.
There are two opportunities as far as I can see — to serve the blogging community and to serve the organisations (brands and agencies) who have an interest in analysing and understanding the blogosphere. And there could be two levels of paid membership. On the one hand there is the Pro account and on the other the Corporate account.
I am with you on the Pro account options. For the Corp account it would be interesting to provide a demographic/analytic focus.
Corp account is an excellent idea Gavin, I know that brands are interested in tracking what’s being said about them in the blogosphere, that’s what buzmetrics is basing it’s entire business on. And of course buzzmetrics has the free http://www.blogpulse.com/ tool as to give people a taste of the technology and then the enterprise http://www.nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/ for the corp.
Yes, I was thinking of something like Blogpulse crossing pollinating the data with Technorati’s tagging. Or maybe even something as fancy as Qualcast.
Karl:
I’ve written about split tracking so often that I bored myself
What exactly do you suggest as meaningful multi-metric for authority? Should we add something that measures actual conversations between the host blogger and readers?
That would track level of engagement and interest in what readers say — that is if interaction with comments are viewed as a good measure of making meaning. Some of the most influential bloggers in my book are the ones who acknowledge and engage — Armano, Verdino, Collier from your list for example.
Hey Karl – Great points and a great meme (sure beats my meme idea – ‘what are your three favorite colors for indoor/outdoor carpeting.) Although Technorati is stumbling,I do think that they can regain their footing as an indispensable blogging tool. I’ve been giving this some thought and will definitely heed your call and post my ideas in the next couple of days.
Great ideas, Karl… I found myself reading your list nodding,
Yup…yup…yup…and that one, too… yup….”
More meaningful metrics would be very useful — esp a mix of metrics beyond basic “authority,” which too often measures longevity more than anything else.
Hi Karl – great start to the discussion. My thoughts turn first to the business model. Does Flickr operate profitably on user fees? I wonder what people would be willing to pay when there are a lot of close product substitutes out there. For Technorati to survive, they need to implement an enterprise-level value proposition. However, I think when they start to enter that space, their most logical opportunities may already be covered by the likes of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Brandimensions and Buzzlogic. I think an individual’s best hope is for a “Technorati-like” alternative (in lieu of Technorati surviving itself) – something light, open source, and able to harness the insight of the community.
@Peter: I’m a user of both Technorati as well as Buzzlogic (and Attentio before that) and I’m pretty sure there’s an opportunity for a service that provides more than Technorati does today, but which is less expensive than Buzzlogic. Not to say that last one is too expensive, but it’s not what smaller companies will be willing to pay for.
When I compare that to cinema again (like in my own post – I used to work in cinema), then you had IMDB for everyone, you had IMDB Pro for more powerful information but still very affordable and then you had data from Nielsen and others that were very valuable but expensive as well. There is room for these levels of information.
Ha ha.The picture which sees that cat still thinks that you are say a feline topic! Karl you of the suggestion return little some what?I feel to return not enough it’s perfect, this be one of my viewpoint, however you are very of stick!
I just have a hard time claiming a blog on Technorati. That’s a system that really needs to be made more simple.
A simple tool sometimes is better than a highly complex tool that no one can understand. Also having to claim 2 separate blogs that have the same core address is annoying
@Valeri – I guess what I mean by a “meaningful multimetric” is something beyond incoming links, possibly a blend of incoming links, comments, and traffic. Many of us use a technorati badge and with that little embed comes a multitude of opportunities to measure other things. Mybloglog does an amazing job of recording incoming links, outgoing links, and traffic. If you think about it the amount of outclicks a blog has might speak to it’s “influence” and incoming links it’s “authority”? I certainly think that engagement is a very important aspect of blogging and we need to establish ways to measure that, agree that all those folks you mention do a great job at it
@Peter & @Kris – I think Technorati does have space that it can carve out for itelf. I’d like it to become more of a conversation tracker as well as blog measurement tool. Ideally i’d like to see comments treated more like blog posts, most of the value is in the comments and yet they don’t get the same level of visibility. A technorati cocomment partnership might be good
On a side note mashable has a post on 8 tools for measuring blogs: http://mashable.com/2007/06/26/6-key-ways-to-measure-your-blogs-success/
Hi Karl –
Sorry to come to this late because I was on holiday, but you raise some great points here. Coincidentally, I just posted on Technorati too … though my point was more about why it has such an allure for bloggers. I agree with your whole list. The only thing I would add is the ability to merge tags similar to how you suggest to merge domains. For example, in most cases I would argue that “pr” and “publicrelations” as keywords would be more useful if you could aggregate them together and not have to think of those two versions of the same term in order to make the “search by tag” feature on Technorati useful.
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