Technorati is everywhere in the blogosphere. Even with all the recent negative coverage about ongoing technical issues and supposedly selling out bloggers - it all drives Technorati's media stock up. Any publicity is good publicity is an old saying that is more relevant than ever, in this new media world where attention is so hard to get.
This of course was one of the takeaways from my post last week regarding Technorati's current dominance of the Alexa charts, over comparatively publicity-poor cousins like Feedster and PubSub (notice I didn't use the word 'competitor' this time!). Some people mocked my post and said that "boiling it down to alexa traffic really doesn't get it."
Oh I beg to differ. What the Alexa charts showed was that Technorati gets it big time - attention, that is.
However (before you loosen up your comment-flaming fingers for a bout of furious typing) the people who dissed my post are right in some ways. There are many other companies in the blog search 'space' that are equal to or even better than Technorati - e.g. Feedster, PubSub, Blogdigger, Bloglines. These and others are all very worthy companies with differing technologies and not necessarily in the same niche markets. The Alexa charts didn't do justice to that point, I totally agree.
But when it comes to getting attention and publicity and sheer buzz, Technorati is in an envious position. You only have to read the Wired piece, and look at the Alexa charts I published, to see what I mean.
]]>DaveS is clearly doing a great job getting the 'Rati name out there, but growing dotcom sectors almost always show this sort of marketing diversity. Some startups invest in having the biggest retail brand, which sometimes leads to success. I'd guess that Dave's monthly PR spend is 5x the size of ours. Others take more industrial routes to consumer success (like our deal with AOL that you outed on this blog a few weeks ago, thank you!), others pursue enterprise customers, etc. We startup CEOs all choose these paths based on educated guesses as to how the market will shape up, which no one will really know for another couple years. The quieter "cousins" aren't asleep at the marketing switch, we just think success will be found in a slightly different direction.
Sidenote on Alexa: I don't disagree with your conclusions as far as they go, but there is one thing to note. As far as we can tell, Alexa completely ignores RSS traffic and RSS is mainly how Feedster and PubSub serve our users.
]]>"I'd guess that Dave's monthly PR spend is 5x the size of ours." Wow, well that goes some way to explaining why their brand is so recognized. And yes that AOL deal you mentioned Scott is huge, I can't wait to see how that pans out. That was a fantastic coup for Feedster to get that deal.
Re "Thank you for the head nod on quality, et al. We're working hard on it. What else would you like to see us do?"
Keep up the great work and don't take pundits like me too seriously ;-) I use all the products and services I mentioned in my post, so there's room for everyone in the blog search market.
]]>In other words, Technorati has tied marketing itself with the bloggers who most want to market themselves.
]]>I've been comparing blog search engines and I like Bloglines more than any of them for seeing who is linking to a specific URL.
Feedster and IceRocket are my favorites for doing blog searches, too, they give back more results.
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