Technorati's New Tools

David Sifry (Technorati's founder) describes some new tools that just might be able to help us to better take the temperature of the blogosphere.

As we know, we can't read every blog.  Mainstream media voices (newspapers, magazines, etc.) really add value because they tell us what and who is worth paying attention to, and cut back on the information overload.  (No need to comment on how they have lost market share over the past five years by doing that very important job wrong - the rise of the blogosphere proves that). 

So how can blogs compete with the editorial value a newspaper offers (or at least, has the potential to offer)?

For starters, Technorati introduces the "explore" feature which brings up blogs that have tagged themselves as being about a certain topic.  It's not much, but it's a start... if you want to have a read about fast food, you can go to Explore and read through blogs that discuss the fast food industry, which might be termed "trade blogs".  No longer are you doomed to whatever blogs a regular Technorati search offers, which would include Joe Consumer's latest fast food run after a drinking binge. 

One obvious problem: bloggers can tag their blogs however they want, and there's not yet a way on Technorati for readers to rate the accuracy of the self-tagging.  So if a drunken blogger casually gave their blog a "fast food" tag after a Broiler binge, or a blogger assigns hundreds of inaccurate tags in an effort to get more exposure for their blog, the reader loses out.  In time though, I'm sure a reputation system will develop to help us better sort blogging content, much like Google developed a useful algorithm for webpage sorting.

Along those lines, Technorati has also developed an "authority meter" for their standard keyword search, which allows you to say whether you want to see all the blogs that contain that search term, or only the blogs that other bloggers are linking to.  Now, Phil Gomes has correctly argued that just because lots of people don't link to a blog, doesn't mean it's less read or less accurate, and David confirms this.  But if Google's success is any guide (and of course it is), once a search tool starts sorting by number of links to a source, that metric does become definitive.  And people will start to pad their results by linking to their friends and setting up link to schemes for SEO (search engine optimization).  So -- watch how you sort results, you might just end up setting the standard for the entire industry.

For example, if you do a search for "Isabel Walcott" in Technorati with the authority meter on high, you see that Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and someone I don't know named Natalie Bennett who must be cool have all mentioned me in their blogs.  If you move the authority meter down to "any authority", Sean Bohan and Ed Vielmetti's posts that mention me come up as well.

Would be cool to see Google offering different "authority sorts".  Show me content by websites that have been around the longest, or by companies that make the most money, or by universities or scientists first, etc.

Comments

[Edward]

Hi Isabel,

I think Technorati is playing fast and loose with the term "authority". It seems to be just the old A-list all over again.

[Iz]

Yes, I agree, it's reminiscent of the A-list. But the problem with search results is you have to sort by something. And the standard for the web right now is, "How many people link to you?"

Like I said, until there's a better way to establish a universal reputation on the web, what else is there besides the A-list?