Technorati Acquires Personal Bee

Pete Cashmore doesn’t think much of the Technorati acquisition of Personal Bee [full disclosure — a former client of mine, but no longer]:

[from Confirmed: Technorati Acquires Personal Bee]

The plan, it seems, is to make Technorati more social, and allow people to be their own media curators. But in reality, that’s really a guise for a search traffic play: sites like Personal Bee are designed to gain search traffic without any effort from the creators. It’s a highly effective model. Technorati does great in search already of course. Generally, though, I think this may be seen as a case of Technorati diverging from its original purpose: it’s a really great blog search engine (the best, I think), and with a bit of tweaking to remove spam, it could be perfect.

So, Pete thinks Technorati should stick to its mainstream value — blog search — and turn away from being a social media company. I disagree. Technorati — in the long run — has no hope of competing with Google and other giants in the search space, and as blogs become more central to what is happening online, Technorati faces a likely death.

Moving toward a social media game is much more defensible, and potentially more attractive for acquisition. The Personal Bee is just one part of this effort at Technorati. The recent WTF feature was launched with the intent of getting into the Digg space. Personally, I think that Technorati should acquire Techmeme or Tailrank, and fill out a larger set of social media offerings, and gently move away from blog search.

And, oh, by the way, Technorati is doing a really abysmal job of leveraging the tag space that the blogosphere is ceding them. Of course, I am used to entrepreneurs not listening to my recommendations — it’s a daily occurrence — but still, I suggested to them almost two years ago that really popular tags could have a social space built around them. But they have fiddled, and as Cashmore correctly points out, have still not conquered the pesky technological challenges below their search service.

12 April 2007 Permalink

Blogs Multiply. Our Heads Explode

Dave Sifry has posted new news about the Blogosphere: It continues to grow, and the rate of growth continues to increase:

[from Sifry’s Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth]

• Technorati now tracks over 35.3 Million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour

Where is the end of this growth? Surely we cannot get to the point where everyone on Earth has a blog or two going, can we? Can we?

Perhaps we can.

Maybe more and more young people will adopt the MySpace/LiveJournal/Mobblogging ethos, and use blogs as a means of self-expression: every one of them. Perhaps every student in every English class will create a blog for their homework, and why not Chemistry, too? Maybe every aspiring chef will post recipes with pictures, and every restaurant will update their daily specials online. Every company will have one for every product in every product line. Every civic group, every non-profit, every band, every town government, every art gallery, every massage parlor. Why not?

So where is the end? And how will we make sense of the immense flood of writing, insight, photos, video, and cross-connections?

Obviously, Technorati is trying gamely to keep up with the flood, but I already see the need for specialization intruding. Memetrackers like tech.memorandum and Tailrank are one alternative to the search/link analysis models that Google and Technorati employ. Human agency — like digg, Squidoo, Top Ten Sources, and Corante Hubs — offer an alternate path, based on human filtering.

But I would rather see and use a social tool, one that makes sense of who I am, what I like, and who I know.

Why isn’t there a solution that is equivalent to Last.fm for blogs, for example? It would require a small plug-in, that would track what I read, anywhere, and would build up a list of my favorite ‘artists’ (bloggers, not musicians) just like the Audioscrobbler plugin does based on iTunes play. I would then — after an appropriate time — be provided with a collection of blog reading neighbors whose preferences are somewhat like mine, and then I could roam around in this virtual neighborhood, looking at what they have been reading, and their commentary on it. People could rate their favorite posts, tag anything, and create a stream of their favorite stuff for others to tap into, like a Last.fm radio station. These virtual neighbors could become my friends, in fact, since we could contact each other, link to each other’s comments, and so on.

That’s the solution to the immensity of the Web. Just like the wide, wide world, we can accomodate the Web only a neighborhood at a time. So we need tools that carve neighborhoods out of the web where they don’t really exist, yet, or if they do, they are so virtual as to be invisible. We need tools to bring these neighborhoods into the light, and make it easy to make sense of the exploding blogosphere by bringing it back down into human scale.

I am sure that I will get all sorts of email from various vendors saying, “Stowe, check out our site… That’s what we do.” Well, so far I haven’t seen it. Maybe the guys at Last.fm should repurpose their current technology to support this. Felix?

18 April 2006 Permalink

Starting From Zero: Day 90

So the 90 day period is over, and the result: Rank: 3,130 (818 links from 382 sites). Started at 0 links from 0 sites, with a rank of 1M+. RSS readership is steadily growing, too:

This will be the last post in the starting+from+zero series.

My understanding of the Technorati algorithms is that rank is determined based on a 6 month window, so I willl revist 3 months from now, and see if I get back to where I once was with Get Real. Last fall, my Technorati rank was around 1,200. We’ll see.

12 April 2006 Permalink

New Visionaries: Dave Sifry, Technorati

A few months ago, I spoke with Dave Sifry about Technorati, and the blogoshere. The most interesting (and enigmatic) aspect of the conversation was the seeming convergence of search technology and media aggregation. Is Technorati adding editorial value to the mix?

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10 April 2006 Permalink

Newsvine Is Looking For A Few Good Writers, Who Know A Few Good Writers, Who Know…

Newsvine is trying to attract writers to blog within their network, rather than out in the wild.

[from Newsvine - Writing On Newsvine]

If you’d like your own column, we’d like to publish it for you! Start writing here, and we’ll promote your articles throughout the site based on what keywords (“tags”) you provide for each article.

For instance, if you wrote an article about Bill Clinton and tagged your article “clinton” it would immediately show up both in your own column (yourname.newsvine.com) and at “newsvine.com/clinton”. As more readers view and endorse your articles, your reach, influence, and placement on the site will grow. We call this democratic system of classifying and promoting content a newsonomy.

I don’t think “newsonomy” will catch on, but the idea of a collective shared tagspace — a la Technorati — owned by the collective is a good one. Why let Technorati make all the ad revenue from the tags?

But why can’t I just join from wherever I blog? Couldn’t Newsvine just take my RSS? Why do I have to blog it there?

Newsvine also is pushing a sort of affiliate marketing model, which Kevin Burton refers to as a pyramid scheme. Pulling in other writers puts more money in you pocket: you make 10% of whatever revenues are made by those you invite to Newsvine.

3 April 2006 Permalink

Jeneane Sessum on The Mainstream Media IS the New Blogging A-List

Jeneane has a great post on the changing complexion of the blogging A-list — it’s becoming dominated by blog consortia:

[from The Mainstream Media IS the New Blogging A-List]

When I look around at the most subscribed to blogs in Bloglines, and not coincidentally many of the new breed in the Technoriati Top 100, I see the effects of RSS and ‘consumption-based reading’ — I see how so many real bloggers who used write in a real, human voice have slipped off the charts, replaced by ‘conglomerate’ news blogs like gizmodo, engadget, wired news, etc. — all well written, but not so much blogs as relentlessly updated zines — and I realize that THESE are the blogs that mainstream journalists who cover similar or related beats are subscribing to. That’s where a large portion of their readership is coming from—and with authority comes the masses, following suit.

With so many in the mainstream news business subscribing and linking to, and getting their news from, these new breed of super-news blogs, what happens to the individual voices?

The blurring between individual blogging and the blog machinery that is emerging — blog consortia like the Huffington Post, the search solutions that feel more and more like media, like Google and Technorati, and the memetrackers like tech.memorandum and Tailrank — means that there will be more and more readership in blogland, but less deep involvement. There will be less active ‘readering’ and more passive audience, as the mainstreaming of blogging becomes more evident.

26 March 2006 Permalink

On The Conference Thing: Etech, SXSW, Unconferences and Monocultures

ETech has turned into one of those events — like many others — where the real value for me is coming from the myriad conversations in the hallways. Not to detract from the presentations, per se, but that’s seems to be where the real deal is for me, here.

A few highlights from 8 March 2006:

• At a press lunch dedicated to the upcoming Where 2.0 — now on my calendar — I met Di-Ann Eisnor, one of the founders of Platial. Several members of the fifth estate seemed intent on trying to rip her guts out because there are stalkers in the world, and they might decide to use a geolocational tool like Platial, so what is she doing about that? Wow, was that over the top, or what. Nat Torkington, the conference chair who was trying to steer the lunch discussion, finally stepped in and shut down the idiots that seemed to be clamoring for editorial review of all user content at Platial. Oh sure. Tim O’Reilly made some insightful visionary statements, but the feeding frenzy of a few self-appointed protectors of the greater geosphere really dominated the whole lunch.
• Tom Coates of Plasticbag.org and Yahoo gave a great talk on the Web of Data, laying out principles not only of design but a higher order goal of participation in the edge-based infrastructure of Web 2.0. Nice.
• Clay Shirky spoke, which I have already posted about (see Social Software is the Experimental Wing of Political Philosophy). Very cool.
• Jon Udell presnted on Attention Focusing Strategies, which helped me focus my attention on the topic, at least so long as he was on the podium.
• The Data Dump session, subtitlted Fun with Graphs and Charts, was real fun. Speakers included
  
  • Marc Hedlund, Entrepreneur-in-residence, O’Reilly Media — I came late, so if he presented something I missed it.
  • David Hornik, General Partner, August Capital — when the world’s funniest (and most insightful) VC looks at six months of his email content, what do we learn? VCs are lazy bastards who do nothing but talk about wine, vacations, and the occasional IPO.
  • Ian Kallen, Architect, Technorati, Inc — There’s a lot of splogs out there, but thank god they don’t cover their trails very well.
  • Eric Lunt, Co-founder and CTO, FeedBurner — Really cool visualization (with audio!) about the rise of feeds, culminating in 200,000 feeds under management at Feedburner.
  • Roger Magoulas, Director Market Research, O’Reilly Media, Inc. — what we can learn about tech trends from book sales and job postings? Ajax and Ruby are really, really hot.
  • Adam Messinger, VP, Product, Gauntlet Systems — As we always suspected, 80% of the work is done by 20% of the programmers, based on his analysis of a bunch of open source projects.
  • David L. Sifry, Founder and CEO, Technorati, Inc. — An update of his State of the Blogosphere preso, showing that, yes, the blogosphere continues to double in size every five months. Most interestingly, he answered a few questions that I sent along recently. 28% of blog posts now have tags using the rel=”tag” microformat. What he didn’t answer — he hasn’t dug out the data — are these questions:
    
    1. What is the average number (or distribution) of tags per tagged post?
    2. How many posts reference the average tag?

I found refuge in the hallways, since the ETech format is highly structured, and the sessions were all jammed. Most of the sessions had people sitting in the aisles and leaning against the walls. I was also surprised — it’s my first ETech — at the depressing ratio of women to men. Perhaps its inevitable that a conference that is constantly referring to its audience as the “alpha geeks” would be so skewed, but it’s still annoying to me. I am not suggesting some nefarious scheme here, to marginalize women or something, just that the whole tone of the show is hyper geeky. As a complement to that — because geeks are as conservative as cats — the structure is a series of parallel tracks just crammed with techno-goodness: technologists with a never-ending parade of powerpoints. Very little organized socialization — not even a defined IRC backchannel! My recommendation would be to go single track, and drop 2/3 of the sessions, and open up the schedule for more loose stuff: but O’Reilly is probably delivering exactly what the alpha geeks want.

9 March 2006 1 Permalink

More Fun with Technorati Favorites

I was sniffing Technorati’s Favorites, and discovered that they have collated the top 100 most ‘favorited’ blogs. /Message is number 99!

What I was hoping for something else when I read this:

Now you can see the Top 100 Blogs, as measured by your Favorites!

What I want is the top 100 blogs based on my personal favorites, not the aggregated favorites of all users.

9 March 2006 Permalink

Jeneane Sessum on Technorati Favorites

Jeneane noticed a bug (I think) in the updating of Technorati Favorites:

[from Bug or Power-Law?]

Why does my new Technorati “faves’ posts” sidebar widget keep showing recent posts for Ken Camp and Stowe Boyd (HI GUYS!), when folks like Sheila Lennon and Will have updated more recently?

I looked, and the same seems to be happening with some of my faves, too. Maybe its related to the chronic updating problems that Technorati is having. If they haven’t been updated for other purposes, does that mean the RSS feeds aren’t updated for Favorites, either?

And Tara Reid is in Chinese?

23 February 2006 Permalink

Technorati Adds Favorites: RSS Reader 2.0?

Dave Sifry IMed me to draw my attention to Technorati’s new Favorites, which I was looking at just then, in the form of my pal, Doc Searls:

Dave told me that the whole idea had real legs:

1. Technorati users can each create their own favorites, as well as look at the favorites of other well-known bloggers like Doc. (This suggests a future social dimension, where people get to look at the Favorites of their Favorites, right?)
   
   
2. Users can enable their blogs or websites with a recently-updated list of posts from favorites, which is perhaps more interesting that a static blogroll. There is an associated seach capability, allowing readers to find stuff, limited to the context of the Favorites domain.

   

3. Of course, each user can simply use the Favorites at Technorati as a time-sequenced stream of all posts from all your favorite blogs.
   
   

I immediately created a favorites list from the stuff I have been most actively reading, and embedded it over there in the left margin as a widget (small formatting glitch, which I hope they will work out soon).

I will see how it works to take the RSS feed from my favorites as the starting point of my daily wandering around, but it seems a better approach than the alternatives.

Dave also tells me that they at work on a dynamic version of the favorites, based on what you are linking to in your blogging. Now that sounds really optimal. I don’t have to think about updating my blogroll over time, no value judgments: its just based on the empirical realities of what I am linking to. I can’t wait.

Technorati must be on the verge of creating a client, to depose the RSS readers. The perfect scenario: getting delivered to me, on my desktop, exactly what I would like to read if I only could have looked inthe future and decided what was most pertinent. Well, one take at the closest approximation to that is likely to be based on the most recent pattern of the links I am creating. Neat.

21 February 2006 Permalink