I have mixed emotions about my recent authority ranking on technorati, i’ve recently dropped from 427 to 402 and that sucks. It sucks because my motivation to blog ebbs and flows a lot and I actually find that measures of popularity like technorati, although not really meaningful (really), they do help motivate me, and believe me if you want to blog for 4 or 5 years on a regular basis motivation is key. In the last week or so i’ve worked particularly hard on creating some meaningful posts and have got some great comments and links which also contribute to my motivation, but that has coincided with this drop in rank on technorati. I don’t want to care, I really don’t, but something inside of me does. So again, technorati, a service that I have really rallied for is actually succeeding in contributing to demotivation. This strikes me in many ways the hight of irony and possibly at the core of technorati’s continuing trials and missteps.
IMHO any service like technorati that actually helps motivate bloggers and make them feel like they are contributing to a greater good (assuming they actually are of course, sploggers and theiving auto bloggers should be damned to hell), would be wildly successful.
Businesses in general should take note of this, make your customers feel great about what they do, make them feel like they are part of a greater good and you will also be wildly successful, just like companies like Flickr, Patagonia, Etsy, Yelp, youtube, Ebay etc.
I guess at some point Technorati stopped looking at bloggers as their customers and that’s when it went pair shaped.
As for anyone that reads my humble blog, you really are my main motivation, and I don’t say it often enough, thanks for reading, commenting and linking 
“you really are my main motivation”, Karl, very nice of you to say so, thank you.
“My humble blog”, simply great!!
karl - i feel your pain - i see it on my blog too - but seriously - you have a passion around a topic - that is really what’s important - we love ya man - no matter your numbers..;)
[also- ranking on technorati has a weird three or six month window that jumps when they update the database or some such thing. so you can fall off and then get bumped back up with your next high-link post]
Amen to that, Karl. Lord knows what’s going on with Technorati but mine has jumping around for a while too. Keep posting…
Thanks for the comments everyone, feels like a virtual group hug
This Reader here encourages you to keep on blogging karl! It’s a fair point you raise though. Personally, I think the safest way to approach it mentally is to not look at the numbers very hard but blog for yourself — what excites and interests you. Since we’re social creatures, that can be tough sometimes! But musings aside, I enjoy your blog and as long as you are interested in writing, I’ll be interested in reading.
The issue really comes down to the relevance of Technorati. My personal belief is that Technorati has been overcome by non-blogs disguising as blogs. Ian Kallan of Technorati responded.