TailRank added a bunch of new features today in a major relaunch of the service. If you are unfamiliar with TailRank, review this post that also discusses its competitors. The basic idea is that it tracks what blogs are writing about, and who’s linking to what, to determine what the major discussions of the day are about. A quick glance at the site will show the reader major breaking news as soon as a few blogs start to write about it.
The undisputed leader in this space is TechMeme, which most bloggers check multiple times per day for news. One thing I like about TailRank is that it has a simple search function, which TechMeme inexplicably ignores. That means if you are looking for yesterday’s, or last week’s, major blog news, TailRank is the place to search. I also like that Tailrank indexes 150,000 “major” blogs, whereas TechMeme only tracks the largest few thousand blogs. This is an issue that Steve Rubel and others have occasionally discussed, calling TechMeme a “Blog Country Club” with exclusive membership.
Previous TechCrunch posts mentioning TailRank are here.
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Looks great…Although I like the presentation at TalkMeme better.
How do they come up with the top 150K blogs?
The top 150k blogs are selected by a ranking algorithm similar to the one we use to rank posts on the site. Basically the way to make sure you get indexed is to just get inbound links from major blogs already in our index.
Kevin
I like TailRank’s interface better. I use Technorati now - is this the same thing?
Technorati provides functionality similar to Tailrank but we try to focus on just one AREA and IMO we do a pretty good job
Technorati is probably what you want to use if you want to search within a larger set of blogs……..
how long will it be before they realize that “tailrank” to the uninitiated sounds more like a risque hotornot than a blog ranking.
Does Gabe Rivera of TechMeme still live in your house, Mike?
http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=292 suggests the answer is yes.
Nothing wrong with this, but I’d suggest that some form of disclaimer is appropriate when you write about TechMeme and competitors.
John Roberts
Thanks John.
Don…. people have already made that association a long time ago
Does Techmeme also offer the same decidedly liberal/left slanted view of the world as its sister publication memeorandum?