I wrote enough about Technorati’s problems, it’s not even funny anymore. Except when it really is. Like, when you turn off your main feature, what’s left?
Technoratty? 
SaaS is an Ancient Model
Posted on August 28, 2008 ·
Lots of talk today about how the SaaS market will ‘collapse’ in two years. I don’t get it: if it survived 40 years, why would it collapse now? Yes, that’s right, SaaS has been a successful model for 4 decades now. Need proof? Check out Technorati linking to my post on the NetSuite IPO 11119 days ago. That’s 38 and a half years, give and take a few weeks. 
Oh, well, that was the fun part, for real analysis check out my fellow Enterprise Irregulars:
Jason Corsello, Anshu Sharma, Vinnie Mirchandani, Bob Warfield, Josh Greenbaum.
LinkednIn Down in Celebration of their Billion-Dollar Club Membership
Posted on June 18, 2008 ·
<rant>
Quite a celebration: just the day after their $53M investment round, valuing the company at $1B (that’s Billion with a B) was announced, LinkedIn is down:
Is there a new emerging trend here? PR blitz, big announcement, site is dead. Other examples just this week:
Firefox Download Day leads to dead site.
Technorati Monster shows to celebrate investment + new ad network. ( But hey, new Sales Team here to help, instead of technologists)
Then there was twitter .. then .. then ….
</rant>
When Your Technology Fails, Hire More Sales…
Posted on June 17, 2008 ·
That seems to be the Technorati recipe: TechCrunch reports they have a new Sales VP with a 7-person sales team, and a new marketing lead. This build-up was likely in preparation for the new business, Technorati Media, a newly launched blog advertising network.
Technorati indeed needs a business model, so if this is it, fine. It’s just frustrating that they’ve spent the past two years in search of business models, while their service gradually fell apart. Anyway, in the spirit of the new-new business, I suggest they sell advertising on the Technorati page we see most frequently:
This was the rant – for details see: CNET News.com, Maple Leaf 2.0, Web Strategy, Trends in the Living Networks, A Media Circus, Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim
Technorati is Borked – Not Only Right Now.
Posted on May 14, 2008 ·
There’s nothing new or unexpected in this Technorati Monster screen:
In fact I see it so often, it feels like a standard Technorati feature. Perhaps it’s time to remove “right now” from the title. Technorati is borked. (period)
You Can’t Compare Technorati to Amazon
Posted on February 15, 2008 ·
It’s rare that I get into a public debate with a fellow Enterprise Irregular, but today is the day:
Michael Krigsman at ZDNet’s Project Failures cites the stellar response by Technorati as exemplary customer communication at a time of system failure that Amazon should learn from.
True, Amazon did not shine (that’s an understatement) when S3 went down earlier today. I’m sure Amazon will work on not only improving infrastructure, but communication – like Salesforce.com did after their major outage, establishing an Health Monitor, reminds us Lassy Dignan at ZDNet.
True, Technorati was exceptionally forthcoming in that particular incident – but the emphasis is on exceptionally, which is why I would not set them as role model for quite a while. Infrastructure problems have been the constant state of affairs for Technorati for years, the Technorati Monster is still at large, and most of these problems have been swiped under the carpet. In fact when they recently removed old posts from their online index without any notification, they explicitly stated they hoped most users wouldn’t notice.
I salute Technorati on their new approach to transparency, if it holds – but they are very, very far from being a role model.
LinkedIn Outage
Posted on January 17, 2008 ·
This may very well be the first LinkedIn outage I’ve caught, and it comes on the day Google’s Blogger was down, and the Technorati Monster popped up it ugly head again. Oh, well, at least this one is cute.
Guy Kawasaki Takes Over TechCrunch…
Posted on November 26, 2007 ·
OK, so we all know Guy Kawasaki plans to Change the World on his own blog. But apparently that’s not enough, he now dominates TechCrunch… and Technorati… the whole Internet? I’m not kidding, just look at his name on all posts listed by Technorati:
Technorati Deletes Index, Hopes Customers Won’t Notice
Posted on November 5, 2007 ·
Just two weeks ago Technorati was praised left and right for “returning to their roots”: reinstating charts and the authority filter in search. The most telling title: Technorati Fights Off Irrelevance With Return of Charts.
Today they are back. To irrelevance.
When I first noticed I could not find posts older than 6 months, I had doubts if I tested enough, and even if I did, was the issue system-wide, and “by design” or just a glitch. Then I got confirmation from Technorati’s Ian Kallen:
We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling that have required taking some data offline. The data is not lost but our priorities are to prefer keeping recent data online. Most people don’t notice
We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.
First of all, thank you, Ian, for responding so fast. Second, it’s a sad post comment: you just condemned Technorati to irrelevance. Your new CEO says:
The core of everything we do is in blog search – without question, we must do that very, very well
Hm… and the first step to providing quality search is to take the index offline… 6 months is not “remote past”, significant events were reported / analyzed by blogs, often better than mainstream media, and now they are nowhere to be found! Here’s the result of a search I performed for background to my next story: Technorati (0 results) and Google (83 results). I can’t use Technorati if it does not remember “yesterday”… and you don’t even have an ETA on restoring the index.
But the worst part isn’t the poor performance It’s the attitude: silently take it offline, hoping “most people don’t notice“. Yuck. In the age of transparency. I’m afraid Dennis Howlett is right:
@Ian: “We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling” – in other words – we’re totally messed up and are trying to figure out what to do next. That would be closer to the truth don’t you think?
Update: Any hopes of users not noticing are up in smoke: it’s on TechCrunch, TechMeme and a bunch of blogs including hyku | blog, TeleRead, Susan Mernit’s Blog, Deep Jive Interests, Data Mining, WinExtra, Kevin Burton’s NEW FeedBlog, and The Last Podcast.
Technorati is Toast: Drops Older Posts from Index
Posted on November 4, 2007 ·
Technorati’s index seems to be rather forgetful: it does not find blog posts older than six months. Frankly, I don’t know if it’s a new “feature”, or it’s always been like this, and I’m just the last person to notice it.
The only time-limit I’m aware of is calculating Authority, which is based on the revolving 6-month link-counts, but I haven’t found any reference in Technorati’s FAQ to the “shelf-life” of posts in their main index. I’ve only done limited testing, but if indeed this is the case, then Technorati is toast. There’s a lot of value in old posts, and the index that finds them is not Technorati, but Google.
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