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May 23, 2007

All New Technorati: No Longer Blog-Centric

Michael Arrington

59 comments »

Blog search engine Technorati made significant changes to its data architecture and user interface this evening. CEO Dave Sifry outlined the details on his personal blog. The changes, Sifry says, are largely in response to Technorati’s changing user base - more and more mainstream Internet users are using the service.

This is also a clear move by Technorati away from blog search, although many of the media search features have been around for a while. It may be an acknowledgment that they can’t beat Google Blogsearch over the long run, or it may be a strategy to go after a larger potential market for time sensitive content. Or both.

The most noticeable visual change is to the home page, which has been completely redesigned (see image above). Technorati has also eliminated search types (keyword search, tag search and blog directory search) in favor of a single search box. All search results are returned in the format technorati.com/tag/query (example) and show results from blogs, videos, photos and audio files all on the first result page. Users can drill down into vertical results via tabs. Users who want only blog search results can now go to search.technorati.com.

All signs are that Technorati is continuing to look for a replacement to Sifry, the founding CEO, and rumors that the company is looking for a buyer persist despite denials from the company.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 1:42 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. TechVision

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:13 am

  2. Lee’s Blog » New Look For Technorati

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  3. Hiccups At Technorati

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  4. ninthspace » Ups and Downs

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  5. Technorati redesigned, not a fan of Ticker

    July 28th, 2007 at 4:45 am

  6. Technorati Launches Streaming Updates Service

    September 10th, 2007 at 8:36 pm

  7. Business News Research » Technorati Launches Streaming Updates Service

    September 13th, 2007 at 1:54 am

  8. Technorati Redesign: Cool But I Hope They Fixed The Bugs » Webomatica - Technology and Entertainment Digest

    September 22nd, 2007 at 2:50 pm

  9. New Technorati CEO Has A Challenge Ahead

    October 1st, 2007 at 6:13 pm

  10. Technorati Drops Content Older Than 6 Months Old

    November 5th, 2007 at 6:55 pm

  11. Technorati Relaunches at DygiScape

    December 4th, 2007 at 5:04 pm

Comments

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  1. yongfook

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:25 am

    is that…a…ticker at the top?

    somebody hold me and tell me it’s going to be ok.

  2. Michael Arrington

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:32 am

    actually, I’m not a big fan of the ticker either.

  3. sean percival

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:34 am

    yea ticker has got to go!

  4. Stephen Sclafani

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 am

    The ticker wont appeal to anyone who reads this blog, I think, but it will to the mainstream Internet users that the redesign is trying to target.

  5. Dorion Carroll

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:40 am

    I definitely recommend http://s.technorati.com for those of you who want screaming fast blog search and link search. And, no ticker ;)

  6. Duncan Riley

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:48 am

    O.M.G! The ticker, what were they thinking?

    Question though, if it’s not a blog search engine any more, what is it?

    I am impartial to the way it lays out the search results though, it’s going to work well with a broader non-tech audience.

  7. yongfook

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:56 am

    I’ve never actually used the “videos” section of technorati before. I didn’t realise that it’s exclusively youtube - do they have some sort of deal with youtube going? or are they like so many other startups who base major, deal-breaking functionality on the assumption that a 3rd party will always provide them access to it…?

  8. Stephen Sclafani

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:01 am

    Duncan,

    Live web search or real-time web search.

  9. Steve S

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:33 am

    The ticker is a really terrible idea.

    I still can’t quite comprehend what Technorati is trying to pull off here. They are supposed to be the “search engine” of the blogosphere and they are darn good at it.

    Expanding your features is one thing, but designing away from what you are good at is entirely different. Google’s Universal Search is ramping up soon, and the sort of general purpose, catach-all search all media and spit back results ordered by category is pretty soon going to be swallowed up by Google’s war machine.

    I’ve always felt that Technorati’s one real strength is that it is the perfect engine to play on bloggers egos. You can basically track how important you are, and people will interact with the system until they are blue in the face if they think it will help push them into the top 100,000.

    Authority was definitely a good way too good, turning your network into some kind of general interest search portal might not be. Hm…

  10. Dario Salvelli

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:05 am

    Bad restyle for me! :)

  11. fk

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:22 am

    looks like a domain scammer page. awesome.

  12. matthew

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:37 am

    i am not a big fan of the new page. pages designed for mainstream users are a big turn off for hard core techies. for instance, it’s hard to take technorati’s blog search seriously when they have a video of “otters holding hands” on their front page.

  13. victor

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:51 am

    This is great, but the truth is that I have alway felt that mediarati is a better brand than technorati with the features on the site and wont mind to work with any body or team to put this in place.

  14. Paul

    May 23rd, 2007 at 4:28 am

    I just have to comment on the ticker, too. First thing I noticed, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing! It’s so corny, and completely useless.

  15. Arjun Ram

    May 23rd, 2007 at 4:48 am

    This is a case of screwing up a perfectly good and functional site by adding features. They should have concentrated on making the product better. A good lesson for me to learn as an entrepreneur.

  16. Hari

    May 23rd, 2007 at 5:23 am

    Older technorati was far better. They are just trying to make it better, but they are unable to.

  17. Zoli Erdos

    May 23rd, 2007 at 6:38 am

    Those of you who preferred the old one should try:
    http://s.technorati.com/

    This is the simplyfied (googlyfied?) version, focused on blogs, and surprisingly fast.

  18. Dave

    May 23rd, 2007 at 6:42 am

    So much for niche web services!

  19. pallet jack

    May 23rd, 2007 at 7:27 am

    Stupid ticker here

    - heh that ticker was the brain child of a poor designer - so 96′ish

  20. pallet jack

    May 23rd, 2007 at 7:27 am

    BTW * I had html Marquee / tags around that “stupid ticker here” - guess TC allows Html but doesnt use it

  21. bdb

    May 23rd, 2007 at 7:31 am

    I have gone to technorati looking for blogs that cover certain topics (eg. intellectual property), without wanting to find specific articles; many blogs will have one article on a topic, but no more. Is this possible to do that w/ technorati or should I have gone elsewhere?

  22. Blogger 4 Life

    May 23rd, 2007 at 7:32 am

    Not really what niche they are going after now. HighFivez.com is a nice new social networking site for Bloggers. Guess we can go there now.

  23. Sprezzatura

    May 23rd, 2007 at 7:33 am

    Apparently they killed Technorati rankings and only keep the “authority” number.

    What a drag, I had just cracked the top 140,000!

  24. QuestionGuy

    May 23rd, 2007 at 8:40 am

    I think it is obvious this change was all about upping their google ad click throughs.

  25. uncle floyd

    May 23rd, 2007 at 8:43 am

    agree with #23:don’t they realize one of the ONLY reasons people use to technorati is to check their ranking and that of their peers?

    the ONE useful feature they had and they took it away. Google’s Blogsearch has been far better for a long time for searching blogs (especiall in terms of speed). This is a really bad move.

  26. QuestionGuy

    May 23rd, 2007 at 8:56 am

    One of the items scrolling by on the Technorati ticker when I looked was “free porn”. Nice job Technorati.

  27. real_life

    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:03 am

    “Free porn” scrolling across the ticker….LOL, niiiiiiiiice! (Borat)

    Perhaps they should have got some feedback before launching this.

  28. Greg

    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am

    It might just be this old computer i am on currently but the ticker is jerky and looks crap to me. Kind of reminded me of space invaders actually with the same jerky movements

  29. david8

    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:25 am

    I like the idea of being able to search for blogs, video and photos all at once, but the concept here seems to be better than the execution.

    If I search for a particular indie band that I like (and have seen just about everyhting that exists on the internet), I KNOW that it’s only picking up stuff from youtube and google video. How about all the other video sites? How about LiveVideo or Daily Motion etc.? I’m SURE that there’s stuff there since I regularly watch it on those sites. Hell, I posted some of it!

    Same problem with photos. It looks totally focused on Flickr. Sure Flickr’s got a lot of stuff, but how about the million other photo hosting sites? A simple google image search will go through smugmug and a lot of other stuff that I’m not seeing here on the “new” technorati.

    I could really go for the new technorati if it actually was thorough in its searching. Unfortunately, it’s not.

  30. Adam Isserlis

    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 am

    I found the ability to look at blog posts, tags, and blog descriptions to be incredibly helpful.

    If you’re looking for a blog that covers a specific niche or genre, looking in posts is pretty useless. Too much stuff comes up that isn’t really relevant.

    I hope they add that functionality and a lot more back into s.technorati.com

    If they don’t - I’m going to do my blog shopping elsewhere.

    aisserlis@rubenstein.com

  31. Russell

    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:56 am

    Rule no 1, dont fix whats not broke. New Technorati is a mistake.

  32. mathew

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:41 am

    I went to Technorati to do a blog search yesterday, as it happens. I was annoyed by the fact that it gave me a bunch of irrelevant crap on the results page, and made me click again to get more than 3 results. Definitely a step back.

    I think next time I’ll go straight to Google Blog Search instead…

  33. permanent hater

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:25 am

    Technorati is dead… useless. Bankruptcy any day now

  34. Jade Beijing

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:25 am

    While “falling on your own sword” might be overstating it, they better make some changes right quick, or there will be a vast exodus. It was already happening before they changed to the Authority scheme, and this will accelerate it for sure. One thing I noticed (I won’t even go to the ticker - if that last more than 24 hours, lots of people should lose their jobs) was that they’ve taken away the grouping of pics in what used to be the “Blog Directory” but now is just “Blogs”, under the title “Blog using this Tag” - I liked that feature, helped with community, which beyond people trying to get their rankings higher, is why Technorati worked - it WAS a social networking site, and now it just seems like a waste dump.

  35. Jade Beijing

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:28 am

    Also, I think it would be fair to change WTF to “What the F@*k?!” were they thinking?

  36. Pete Quily

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    it’s like they’re saying we can no longer compete with google on blog search so we’ll start competing with them on video and music search. Right. Good luck with that.

    They’ve take away their competitive edge features and replaced them with blandness as they march towards irrelevance. Too bad.

  37. Lara

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:10 pm

    Mmmm. Nice groovy design. Reminds me of a farmer’s market. Carrots and LETTUCE!

  38. Jay

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:20 pm

    I want rankings back!! “Authority” is nice, but it needs context. Rank gave that number context.

  39. eas

    May 23rd, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    I’m not even getting blog posts in the main search results. Technorati WTF, indeed.

  40. Jade Beijing

    May 23rd, 2007 at 4:46 pm

    Technorati seems down - alternating between a lame (and desperate looking) “brb” to “Technorati is borked”. I think those guys that are going to lose their jobs are scrambling right now to put something right. Somebody’s borked alright.

  41. Enjoy Deals

    May 23rd, 2007 at 4:46 pm

    Good design, But worried that in providing the new and new features they will loose their hold on their Core strength i.e. Blog Search

    Lets see ?

  42. jane

    May 23rd, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    What is the point of technorati if they don’t have the rankings? Somebody should pick up the slack and create a site that does this. Whoever can do it semi-authoritatively will do well.

  43. Chris24

    May 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 pm

    I really don’t like the “ticker” at the top of the technorati page. It looks old-fashioned now. I Liked it has it was. There should be an option to switch back.

  44. Frank Cefalu

    May 24th, 2007 at 9:04 am

    # "ron paul"
    # akon

  45. Neil J. Squillante

    May 25th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    Mike, can you share your traffic percentage from Technorati versus Google? Just curious. If Microsoft cannot compete with Google at search, can anyone?

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  47. Kathryn

    June 10th, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    That’s just great. Used to be able to do mission-critical blog searches, now I’m stuck watching Japanese people squeeze their butts through moving walls or get slammed into the pool and lucky to get out in 30 mins. I’m not sure I’m can continue using Technorati for blog “work”. Seriously, I’ll have to limit it to “fun” time…Why’d they have to make it so distracting?

  48. ovjmwcrffd

    June 19th, 2007 at 10:46 am

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