When Technorati announced a new CEO at the beginning of October, many were hoping that the once great Technorati would focus on its core blog search product, a product that had been virtually ignored as the company tried to be all things to everybody, whilst never being the master of one thing.
It might have been wishful thinking.
Zoli Erdos noticed on Monday that he couldn’t find anything in Technorati’s index that was older than 6 months. He emailed them for a response, and a reply from Technorati’s Ian Kallen confirmed it:
We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling that have required taking some data offline. The data is not lost but our priorities are to prefer keeping recent data online. Most people don’t notice
We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.
The emphasis in the quote is mine but it’s the key line: “most people don’t [sic] notice.” They didn’t notice because they’ve long since switched to using Google BlogSearch or the main index of Google itself. The declining number of people who do regularly use Technorati for search will soon be jumping across to Google as they discover that Technorati is a shallow pool when searching blogs.
If Technorati wants to save money (economization) on their core product so be it, because the long term result will be less traffic for their servers to cope with which will result in data center savings, a good thing given that if rumors are correct they’re quickly running out of funding as well.
Alas Poor Technoratti, I knew him well!
Killed off by MSLiveSearch.
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
C’mon Duncan, how many people go back more than six months? I think there’s some research that shows that generally after 36 hours, almost nobody looks at a blog post. I’m all for being skeptical of Technorati, but they have a point here.
Their Top Popular 100 and Top Favorites are still a valuable gem.
Both in getting new traffic and finding interesting blogs
well… then again, some blogs are tutorial orientated, software tutorials are information that could be useful to those that seek for ‘how to…’ the life cycle of these articles are generally more than 6 months.
“Most people don’t [sic] notice.”
What’s the “[sic]” for, Duncan?
Merriam Webster, we are comment soulmates- same question here.
Sometimes it makes me sad to see people change the original nature that made them what they are. Technorati-is Technorati today because of its blog search. This step and their diversification might back-fire on them.
agreed w/ #5. “sic”, latin for “so it is,” is generally used to indicate a mistake or typo in the original quotation.
if one were to quote me saying “duncan riley are writer,” a [sic] would be appropriate.
…Duncan believes Erdos meant to say “most people *didn’t* notice [the fact that we stopped publishing the older data at some point]” as opposed to “people *don’t* notice [that it isn't there anymore].”
Just a possibility — agree completely the [sic] doesn’t make sense here. Proofreading for little mistakes like that are definitely not TechCrunch’s strong suit.
Technorati has a search function. Never knew that. Never used that. Never will
..
Technorati still matters (sic)
“…it was their (game to lose)…”, some article I cant remember. They had the lead, they had the first place position, they had the funding. So?
A boy stood on a burning deck,
he feet full of blisters,
he cut his shorts on a rusty nail and had to wear his sister’s.
The lead, the jump start, the money were not enough to save Technorati – and the new CEO seems not to have a clue – another SV insider whose forte is burning down wounded companies –
Risk-taker, caretaker, surgeon, undertaker = stage four for Technorati.
Someone please take Technorati out back and shoot it already.
I’ve been using Google’s blog search for awhile now.
I don’t agree with #2 — the “blogosphere” might only buzz about an issue for 24-36 hours, but people who find those posts via a search engine will continue trickling in for a long, long time.
Some issues are pertinent no matter how long ago they were posted — find a bug in your favorite MS app? Odds are, someone has written a blog post about it. Now, try to find that post in Technorati? You won’t, because they blogged about it a year ago — when *they* first discovered the problem.
the [sic] is to indicate the incorrect grammar in a direct quote, and only when I used it in a sentence as opposed to when I first used it in the block quote…maybe it’s not used in the US but its commonly used in journalism here. It should have been didn’t, and it was the Technorati chaps quote, not Zoli’s. Michigan (#11) lol
Seth (#2)
What’s exactly the point of a search engine that doesn’t include the items you may be searching for? The one thing Technorati should be doing is providing a great blog search engine. What they’re now doing is presenting one that is half pregnant..and as you know you really cant be half pregnant
As Ian said:
“… We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.”
All portents of our imminent demise aside, it’s probably easier for all involved, as we keep making changes to our services and infrastructure, to solicit comments from Technorati in the course of your journalistic fact-finding process. We have the older data, it’s safely put away where unfounded rumors can’t reach it.
Also, Ian is correct in saying that most people _don’t_ notice. A look at our search pattern data clearly shows that users are not inclined to search far back in time, and since Technorati is primarily a recency-based service the impact on our users (all 10 of’em!) is not large when we freeze old data. Let me know if you need a blog post older than 6 months, Duncan. I’m more than happy to help.
So, now my hand is forced to raise you a [sic]
“most people don’t [sic][sic] notice.”
Jorge Barrios
Technorati
Yeah, everyone knows what sic means, and we know you used it incorrectly. There’s nothing wrong with the grammar of that sentence.
“The data is not lost but our priorities are to prefer keeping recent data online. Most people don’t notice
We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.”
“Didn’t” would refer to past “noticing,” (ie, in the past, people did not notice). “Don’t” would refer to present tense noticing (ie, people notice in the here and now that Technorati’s policies have changed). Since he is describing a present policy, all noticing would take place in the present tense. Therefore, his use of “don’t” is more correct than the correction that you offer.
Of course, this comment could be seen as troll behavior. But to stoop to the condescending gut-punch of “sic” in an article is incredibly immature, and it’s even more startling that a journalist (sic) would not know how to correctly use it.
As a cybrarian, I must disagree. What will happen to all those students of Web 2.0 who want to research a specific event or time and what the blogs said about it? Not keeping older data is very shortsighted of Technorati.
“…using Google BlogSearch [sic]”
The last line is also very awkward. I’d like to be [sic] all over it.
Dunkin
it was used in the context of Zoli asking the question with the response being in the past tense, not future tense. Most people don’t notice doesn’t make sense: it presumes that people wont notice in the future, where as Zoli had already noticed, dictating an appropriate response in the past tense.
As for the whole sic debate, I’m sick of it already, lesson learned and wont be repeated again
Well I had Technorati search on my blog for looking up older blog posts. My most popular one is 2 years old now (http://www.join...eb-20-mean.html) and continues to get referenced all over the web. I’ll be switching back to Google. Technorati has no relevance any more…
As Duncan invents new uses for “sic”, the Technorati guy has invented a whole new word without anyone noticing: “recency” [sic].
What’s with the awful picture? Was the Technorati logo inserted with MS Paint? Uncov.net are probably not shaking in their boots. Oh, and the use of the present tense – which was throughout the paragraph, not just in the sentence you sicced up on – is perfectly correct if the situation is continuing.
23
why is it every time I do an image I’ve been doing in that format for the better part of 5 years on blogs does some one like you come along and suggest that its got something to do with Uncov? Sure, Uncov will probably like this post but get the memo that Uncov isn’t original nor do they own the rights to funny graphics or lolcat pics! The image for the record is suppose to signify the wheels falling off from Technorati, and it was Photoshop thank you
I’ve only ever used Technorati for one thing and one thing only — to find the MOST RECENT posts either linked to my blog or on a particular subject.
To me that is the CORE functionality of Technorati.
Google blog search doesn’t do that as well because it is FILLED with SPAM. Though is does find some stuff Technorati misses.
Where Technorati has made a mistake is getting away from natural search for SUBJECT search and gone to reliance on tags, at least for one of my commonly used search terms.
That has driven me more to blogpulse.
But, frankly, I don’t get the “blog search” is Technorati core functionality assertion. I’ve never seen it that way, and I’ve been using Technorati almost from the beginning.
Duncan,
I’m not saying it’s derivative. I’m saying it looks rubbish. The image would have served its purpose without trying to insert the company logo (I would hope most of us are intelligent enough to get the joke and not fill up the comments with “duh why is there a picture of a tractor?”), and the black text on part-dark-part-light background and obvious cut-and-paste job wouldn’t have distracted attention from the picture, which is otherwise funny and well placed.
Rollo,
http://www.m-w....tionary/recency
Is this Duncan guy a 12 year-old? Or is he just Arrington’s toady? Cuz his critique of Technorati betrays his utter ignorance about Technorati’s core promise: what’s happening right NOW.
granted, i COULD scroll back more than 6 months worth of posts at Techcrunch, but then I’d just have more than 6 months worth of this guy’s stupidity!
do some research junior.
@Duncan – do *you* *really* *ever* search for a blog (post) more than 6 months old, via Technorati or via GBS?
If blogs want to be taken more seriously, a searchable archive that can used to build up a peer-review trail on any topic might be really helpful! I hope Technorati figures it out and reverses this destructive, pointless course they (and Pete Doherty) are on.
At the moment Technoratie is really struggeling. I hope they will come back to where they have been, I think they are really usefull.
Jorge: I stand corrected. Never thought I’d learn a word dating from 1612 on this blog.
Of all the areas to look for economization, it doesn’t seem to be that indexes should be one. How much space can possibly be consumed by textual data? I mean, reams and reams of data can be contained in a relatively small space and using data compression techniques this can become even more miniscule. What about offloading to a lower storage tier? e.g. SATA.
You are using “sic” wrong. Instead of this:
The emphasis in the quote is mine but it’s the key line: “most people don’t [sic] notice.”
You should have put:
The emphasis in the quote is mine but it’s the key line: “most people [REPLACEMENT] notice.”
Using “sic” implies the original quote was in error, which it wasn’t.
However, all of this presumes that a you needed to replace “don’t” with “didn’t” which you don’t because it’s correct in the both original and quoted context.
Both Google BlogSearch and Technorati have a lot of Spam. Technorati has lost relevance today imo.
I think its time for a “social” wiki style blog search engine. I dunno why it has not been done yet.