Update: Technorati just got 7.6M in funding so hopefully they will invest more in their technology – Tip of the Hat to Mashable.
We all know that Technorati is an important engine in the social media space, but it’s strange to me that it has held onto that place without really evolving very much over the last year or so. It still seems a little technically slow to evolve, i mean how about some “tag clusters” like Flickr did a year ago. How about categorizing the top 100, I mean seriously, a blog is not really category any more is it? How about some more tools to explore that influence?
Anyway, all I’m saying is Technorati is pretty good, but i think it holds more influence than it should, and that it had better watch out for upcoming tools that “monitor” the blogosphere.
Nielson is the 800 pound gorilla in the “metrics” space, and it’s sidling into Technorati territory with when it bought buzzmetrics and rolled out “blog pulse” tools that include a top 100, a conversation tracker, and blogger profiles. Although, here’s a little blogpulse trend graph to show how influential Technorati is when compared to blogpulse, and pubsub (yes there are three lines on the graph, look close):
So why is Technorati so influential? Well I think they did a good job of providing some tools and a framework, and let the community do the work. Tags are a way for bloggers to categorize themselves and place themselves in a hierarchy.
Tags also provide a way for bloggers to identify themselves as part of a broader meme, a broader conversation if you like. Bloggers also get to claim their blogs, and add additional information and context around it. In the end Technorati is a co-creative engine that helps manage creativity that is happening at the “edges”, and it’s certainly continueing to do that with it’s work in the microformat space.
My point here is that other companies are moving into a space that Technorati should own, because if blog pulse or pubsub actually figure out a way to be a part of the community and provide technology that works reliably then we will all be talking about the blogpulse 100 or the pubsub 1000 (looks like they havn’t figured out how to remove splogs, all the top 10 are .info crap). They do position it as “most influential media”, based upon it’s linking algorithm, problem is that linking algorithm is so opaque that it’s almost meaningless to me. Add to that, I can’t link to my own rating, or compare myself to sites that I think are more relevant to me, or embed my “pubsub” top 1000 on my own blog, it’s no wonder everyone ignores it. What can I say, bloggers are vain…. why am I talking about this? Well i’m in the pubsub 1000 and that is much better than the Technorati 20,000 
BTW The Co-Creative Business Show at CustomersOnFire.com just broke into the Technorati 100,000:
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Usually comes down to first mover advantage, superior word of mouth early on, large installed user base with a lot of intertia, and getting the formula mostly right, enough so that innovations have to be 10x more compelling to motivate change.
I agree they got a bump from being first mover, but I think they need to be very mindfull of the competition right now. As opposed to WOM you might way “word of link” because in the end talk is cheap, but links are currency
and they nailed that with the “technorati profile” widget that every blogger has on their sidebar. IMHO blogpulse has got some pretty cool tools, and if they can turn that into a “must have” for bloggers to link to they will really start moving into technorati’s territory. Not only that blogpulse is actually a front for the money maker for nielson-buzzmetrics which is called “brandpulse“, so if nielson makes a lot of money from corporations trying to track their brand equity in the blogosphere they can then invest in better technology that bloggers will glom onto.
K