Technorati Confusion
Over the years (my blogging years) I've had an up and down relationship with Technorati. — In recent times, it's mostly been up. Now that I've given up on Trackbacks, the Technorati link in the flare at the bottom of each post is my replacement for them.
Context & Ripple Effects
The author of A VC has had an up-and-down relationship with Technorati over his blogging years, but by mid-2006 he counts himself mostly back in its camp. Technorati spent late 2005 building toward this moment: live updated charts tracking what people say about topics users care about launched in December 2005, following its February State of the Blogosphere growth report and its third birthday as a public service that November.
First-order effects
- For this blogger, giving up on Trackbacks means the Technorati link in each post's flare becomes the working substitute — inbound-link discovery moves off a blog-platform protocol and onto Technorati's search index.
Second-order effects
- Each blogger who makes the same swap raises the stakes on Technorati's index freshness and reliability; the service's live topic charts already position it as the real-time read on blog conversation rather than a static ranking page.
Third-order effects
- If protocol-based conversation tools keep ceding to search-index-based discovery, blog conversation tracking consolidates around whoever indexes fastest and most completely — Technorati's central position in mid-2006 depends on holding that edge.
The trend: Blog conversation tracking is shifting from open protocols like Trackback toward centralized search services like Technorati.