Technorati has just launched a new directory of ‘tag’ pages, offering brief overviews of a variety of tech-related topics. Tag pages range from broad subjects like ‘internet’ to individual companies, with each page offering links to relevant articles, blog posts, user-written summaries, and related topics on Technorati (in some ways the pages are reminiscent of Mahalo’s topical overviews). Unfortunately, while these tags could eventually serve as a handy glossary to the web, it seems that in an effort to quickly build up content Technorati is openly inviting users to submit articles that are less than objective.
Technorati can automatically generate listings of recent blog posts relating to each tag, but it still has to rely on users to write the summaries for each page. To entice writers, the site is allowing users to include links to their own blogs or webpages in their submissions (provided they’re relevant):
“This is a unique opportunity for authors, brands, agencies, experts and content sites with some significant benefits. Your tag article will appear on Technorati.com with a writer credit. You will be seen as the definitive expert on a tag subject – by millions of readers. Your article can include links to useful references and sites, including your own, if relevant, as well as your own byline link. It’s also really easy to contribute: tag articles are only 2-3 paragraphs, between 100 and 200 words, and can live for years as evergreen content.”
To further entice writers, Technorati is making each tag page first come, first served (there’s apparently no voting system in place to float the most objective summaries to the top), so this is effectively a gold rush period. Technorati says that each tag page will be overseen by trusted editors in the Blogcritics community to reject overly commercial submissions, but it still seems like the system is openly inviting self-serving and biased summaries.
For more, check out Technorati’s blog post here.
thanks for your post,,it very informed. please keep update
To clarify a good question that Jason raises, our tag articles are intended to be more Wikipedia-like than Digg-like, hence, no voting mechanism. In terms of the quality of writing and editing, I’d wholly invite people to visit http://www.blogcritics.org and experience the quality reading experience firsthand. Since its founding five years ago, Blogcritics has published over 80,000 articles – every one of which has been edited by passionate and proven editors. We stand by the quality of the contributors, the editing and what’s published on the site, and believe that will translate to Technorati tag articles as well. Is the content perfect? Of course not. But remember, most of the writers are passionate volunteers, and like all social media properties, the audience are both the creators and consumers (BTW, the Technorati entry on Wikipedia is ancient, and hasn’t been updated despite numerous flaggings; social media isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly becoming incredibly popular because the audience has a voice).
>>”You will be seen as the definitive expert on a tag subject – by millions of readers.”
A wonderful idea.
An audience of “millions of readers” certainly deserves to be treated with respect and outstanding content.
One or two of us on the other side of the Pacific perceive a heavy cultural bias from the “passionate and proven editors.”
Any plans to include editors from other continents?
is this the first step away from algorithim search results and torward and cataloged natural language rolodex style internet?
LandrushLocator.com – all aboard
Jason – Fyi, the Mahalo link needs fixing
“Technorati says that each tag page will be overseen by trusted editors in the Blogcritics community to reject overly commercial submissions, but it still seems like the system is openly inviting self-serving and biased summaries.”
http://technora...m/tag/investing goes to a landing page for what can not be more overtly commercial – a landing page for a get rich quick scheme.
spammers heaven
@Babak – thanks for the flag. For the moment, we’ve removed content from that author.
I really do love your posts!