Technorati: Yahoo or Microsoft?
Speculation is percolating that Yahoo will snap up Technorati. Michael Arrington points to Yahoo's purchases of Flickr and Del.icio.us. … A month ago, I speculated that Microsoft would buy Technorati. My thinking: With Yahoo moving ahead in the community …
Context & Ripple Effects
This rumor sits at the intersection of two things already on the record: Yahoo has completed purchases of both Flickr and Del.icio.us — the precedent Michael Arrington cites — and Microsoft spent late December 2005 working on a deal to counter the Google-AOL alliance. The author's month-old argument that Microsoft needs Technorati is explicitly framed as a response to Yahoo's community momentum.
Neither bid exists beyond speculation — both are flagged as rumored — but the fact that Arrington and the Blogspotting desk independently land on the same small target says something about how few independent social-web assets of consequence remain.
First-order effects
- A Yahoo deal would extend its confirmed string of community acquisitions — Flickr photos, Del.icio.us bookmarks — with Technorati's blog index under the same roof.
- For Microsoft, the author frames the purchase as defensive: matching Yahoo's community momentum after its December positioning against the Google-AOL tie-up.
Second-order effects
- Two deep-pocketed suitors circling one small startup puts upward pressure on valuations for the remaining independent tagging, feed, and blog-search companies, turning each into a candidate target.
- Whichever suitor loses the race is pushed toward buying a substitute community asset rather than building blog search in-house.
Third-order effects
- If portal competition keeps settling through acquisition rather than product development, exit paths for social-web founders consolidate around Yahoo, Microsoft, and their peers rather than standalone businesses.
- The pattern points toward blog-era data — tags, feeds, link graphs — accumulating inside the large portals, raising eventual questions about how much of the blogosphere's discovery layer a handful of companies control.
The trend: Mid-2000s portal rivalry is increasingly waged through serial acquisition of social-web startups, with Yahoo's Flickr and Del.icio.us deals setting the template that makes even niche assets like Technorati a two-way contest.