March 02, 2005
TOY COMPANY CONTINUES TO PLAY WITH ITSELF: Given the fact that 1) the core software of Technorati fails to function a significant amount of the time (although it does improve s l o w l y.) 2) The tecnorati laughably named "help desk" cannot seem to return simple emails, and that 3) Weird behavior persists in its lagging results page, it is always a thrill to see that they continue to squander time, capital and energy on really dinky stuff like these really minor "favelets".
We've been using them internally for a while, and it really makes a difference in my web browsing experience to get a quick view of what people are saying about any particular article, web page, company, keywords, or blog post. -- Sifry's Alerts: New Technorati This favelet for IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc.
Why do they spend their time dicking around like this between meetings and conferences? I don't know. Maybe it really is the best they can do.
The Technorati concept certainly seemed like a good idea at the time, but it has continued to lag far, far behind its promise for a very long time now. I used to think the problem was in the software and the scaling difficulties. No longer. It is institutional. If there really was a business to be made out of what Technorati is supposed to do, I'd hope that someone who knows how to do it comes along. But since Technorati is now obviously just a core dump for excess capital from clueless inverstors, I don't hold out any hope any longer. More and more it just looks like a bunch of people who've gone from heroes to hustlers in nearly no time at all.
Ironic that the Blog Ecosystem from Truthlaidbear.com, a labor of love by one person with almost no money, provides much more useful, accurate and up-to-date information than whatever time, effort and cash has been hoovered by Technorati.
At this point, it seems that the only real achievement by Technorati has been to establish itself as the go-to source about blog growth by MSM reporters who have no idea about the actual service Technorati purports to offer. That's probably all they have to do to continue to raise money from sources that are either clueless about technology or deep in the O'Rielly karass, but it really is a shame otherwise.
Too bad. I think that I remember that they once had some high ideals. But maybe that was all just part of the hustle.
Posted by teberle at March 2, 2005 11:33 AM from American Digest
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