Okay, so you’re the CEO of Technorati…
What the hell do you do now? If you were awake yesterday I’m sure you heard about Technorati’s latest “feature” dubbed WTF (Where’s the fire). Has anyone found any review that is a glowing endorsement of this product? Everything I’ve read has the same tone of utter confusion as to why this was even released. To clarify what it is, let’s see what the CEO himself has to say about it.
When you see a top search with an orange flame next to it, it means at least one person from the community has written their view as to why that topic is hot - right now. The community is also invited to either write their own explanation or vote on the WTFs they view as most helpful. Based on a combination of number of votes and timeliness, the top WTFs by search topic appear on the top of the results page.
Whaaaa?
For one, anytime I ask people if they use Technorati they usually (and by usually I mean over 90% of the time) say they just use it to see who has linked back to them. Very few people use the search feature as it is because Technorati isn’t really known for their stability. So what’s the best thing you could do in this situation? If you though that improving the stability of your site (which is down as of this writing) or giving you better results was the answer you would be wrong. The correct answer is to create a social feature that allows you to control the search results of a given topic.
Considering how few people will use this (yes I’m making a bold prediction here, I know) it will be pretty easy to game this system. But is it even worth it? What benefit do you get out of WTF? What’s the ROI for your time invested? Seriously if I spend my time writing up a quality explanation as to why the blogosphere is searching for “Paris Hilton nude” what benefit do I get for making it up to the top?
And I know I’m never nice to Technorati on this site and believe me I really wish I had something positive to say about them one day, but they failed twice here so I guess you can say they actually did kill two birds with one stone. One they created something that I’m not seeing anyone says has any value and two they do a horrible job of explaining it. Let’s add to the fact it doesn’t fix the number one complaint that people have with the service and that it has a 50/50 chance of working for you.
It is great to see that they are trying to build some community features into their site, but I don’t think this was the best way to do it. The service just comes off as gimmicky. If you are sitting down and thinking about creating a competitor to Technorati and you ask the question “What don’t they do well” you will have a clear cut answer sitting right in front of you. So if you are the Technorati CEO what do you do?
Related reading:
Technorati should fire half their employees, kill things that aren’t directly related to Search (aka, WTF), and then concentrate 100% on making their Search product the best that it can be before Google Blog Search wipes them off the face of the Earth permanently.
They took a fantastic design put together by Derek Powazek and replaced it with the hideous abomination that you see currently (Strike 1), then they raised yet another round of funding and still their service can’t keep up with demand (Strike 2). I imagine that Strike 3 is this WTF service they’re now working on, and if that’s the case, then their ship has already sailed and Technorati employees should leave immediately before it’s too late.
By Mike Rundle on February 1, 2007 4:27 am
Wow. Just… wow. Didn’t they ask anyone what WTF stood for, or do they think they’re being clever?
Features like this just make me think Technorati has no interest in improving their (severely broken) search, they just want to become the next Yahoo/Friendster/Whomever2.0.
I don’t even mind their design, but every time they introduce a new feature that isn’t “greatly improved search” I lose a bit more confidence in them…
By Michael Moncur on February 1, 2007 5:29 am
Firstly, faux swearing via acronyms is both clever and funny. When used in branding, doubly so. That’s why no one should criticize Technorati over the naming of WTF.
Secondly, I think this entire new project is Technorati management appeasing VCs, investors and the board. They can’t sit around doing the same thing they’ve always done when everyone else in web 2.0 is getting talked about being the next takeover target while Technorati is off the radar. Actually fulfilling the potential of their original service is just silly not matter how good that would be.
Finally, nice posts recently Scrivs. Good to see you blogging more in 2007.
By Anthony on February 1, 2007 6:24 am
I also blogged on this here and linked to this site, (trackback doesn’t seem to work, maybe because it took Technocrapi nearly 12 hours to ping) - but my advice is much the same - Do the basics well, stop faffing around with gimmicks.
By alan p on February 1, 2007 6:48 am
Of course, I would actually DO something with Technorati. That’s the problem with Technorati.
By Kyle Korleski on February 1, 2007 7:07 am
Last week I wrote a post called “Does Technorati Matter?”
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/01/26/does-technorati-matter-searching-for-violent-acres/
I was sitting as the top result for the #1 search term on Technorati and it was only bringing in under 40 hits a day… and all those hits were people who had clicked on the top 10 results page, not the organic searches.
That made me wonder how many people use Technorati blog search at all?
By engtech on February 1, 2007 12:28 pm
Forget appeasing your VCs, what about making your employees happy? I find it hard to believe everyone was 100% behind this venture and if they were they have been inside the loop a bit too long and need to start reading what everyone is saying about them.
Engtech: Something just isn’t right about Technorati and I can’t put my finger on it yet, but those stats support my theories.
Anthony: Thanks, always great to hear that.
By Scrivs on February 1, 2007 12:36 pm
Have to agree with Mike on the design - the new design is horrible! The old one had some class but the new one is just blughh…
I find the technorati site incredibly slow. I check my blog in it every so often. But I wouldn’t use it in general cos I wouldn’t be patient enough to wait for the pages to load.
Anyone else find this?
By Thomas Holmes on February 1, 2007 12:43 pm
Scrivs: All the examples to which people are pointing are symptoms of the true problem, which your “what don’t they do well?” question begins to address. Design, functionality, new features, VC pressure, unintelligible CEO speak… they’re all signs of good-old-fashioned, grasping-at-straws lack of focus. If Technorati would stop treating symptoms and focus on what they–with their current intellectual property and user base–are better at doing than anyone else, they might be able to recover as a compelling property.
Anthony: I’d agree with your proposition that double entendre is an effective method of branding if–and only if–it is in line with your core brand idea. Redefining “WTF” is humorous for an edgy or thought-provoking brand. (I think we can probably agree that it’s been quite some time since Technorati was considered either of those things.) If the humor is at odds with your core brand, it comes off as “trying too hard” or worse yet, “completely stupid.”
By Rick Turoczy on February 1, 2007 1:18 pm
Technorati’s biggest problem is scaling, and stability. Something they have not even come close to matching. On one side of the coin lets say they want to compete with digg. Do they have what it takes to scale NO. So why bother trying.
Cut the loose meat and focus on what people use. And that’s webmaster like to track their links from other blogs. Minimalize the rest sail it down the river. Simple as that.
By David Krug on February 1, 2007 2:35 pm
For once I’m not so sure it is a good thing that we are all in agreement. What options do they have though? I’ve never heard of any potential buyouts and surely all that VC money can’t be disappearing that quick can it?
By Scrivs on February 1, 2007 3:40 pm
IMHO, Technorati’s days are numbered. Its search technology is horrible, and really, it serves no purpose to end-users anymore. Actually, I doubt it ever did.
By fp on February 1, 2007 3:47 pm
Technorati is for navel gazing. That’s it.
What’s interesting if you see the WTFs on top terms they fall into two categories:
a) written by employees
or
b) people promoting their blog posts
By engtech on February 1, 2007 4:17 pm
I wrote 2 wtf’s today, just to see how (if?) it all worked. One linked to my blog post (on Flickr) I was curious to see how it worked more than anything, is all. The other didn’t link, its on the WTF subject itself. Both are, ummm, very non-sycophantic - now I am looking to see how the voting system works, but the WTF posts by dsifry and lyziwg are pulling waaay ahead - be interesting to see what happened if my or another sarky post started to win out ;)
By alan p on February 1, 2007 4:53 pm
Just wanted to pop in and say I found this article through Technorati while searching for “Paris Hilton nude”… the irony is killing me.
By JGriggs on February 2, 2007 6:11 am
[...] To play off the Technorati entry, let us pretend that you are the CEO of Digg (and no it isn’t Kevin Rose) and you are trying to stop the spamming/gaming issue that everyone is well aware of on Digg. What do you do? First let’s look at the problems and see if their solution matches any of them. [...]
By Okay, so you’re the CEO of Digg » Wisdump on February 2, 2007 4:23 pm
WTF is already being used by business to inject their spam into tag searches. If Technorati thinks their users care enough to submit sincere info-snippets, they are years behind on reading the feedback they’ve been getting.
By Montoya on February 8, 2007 10:37 pm