You've got to hand it to Technorati, they sure know how to get media and blog attention. A recent Wired article makes the extraordinary claim that Technorati is "a public utility on a global scale". With no mention whatsoever of other blog search engines, Wired compares Technorati to Google - as if Technorati is as omnipresent in the blog search space as Google is in the Web search space. And in a sense it is, due to breathless coverage such as this Wired piece.
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.
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Very true!
Posted by: Peter Caputa | July 16, 2005 2:04 AM
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?
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.
Posted by: Scott Rafer | July 16, 2005 3:47 AM
Thanks Peter and Scott.
"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.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 16, 2005 8:55 AM
Thank you for the kind comments Richard! Technorati does not currently have a PR agency and we are very lucky to have such involved users discussing the things they care about, including Technorati. There are interesting times ahead for blog search as the voice of individual publishers continues to influence our lives.
Posted by: Niall Kennedy | July 17, 2005 6:57 AM
Technorati has incredible enthusiasm for the myth of the blogosphere, and they work really hard with makers of that myth to grow that myth.
In other words, Technorati has tied marketing itself with the bloggers who most want to market themselves.
Posted by: anon | July 17, 2005 1:19 PM
You might check out my blog for the past few days. http://scoble.weblogs.com
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.
Posted by: Robert Scoble | July 19, 2005 8:56 PM