Technorati aka Sorry there are too many requests…
Unlike yesterday’s Start.com, Technorati is a site that I want to enjoy. It’s a boon to bloggers because that is what it focuses on. It’s our own little Google and it gives us a chance to see how our content connects with others.
Design-wise it’s a beautiful site. It has grown leaps and bounds since it first started and I am happy to see that Dave Sifry and company have placed such a high emphasis on design. It’s playful tone makes you want to stay on the site and explore.
Feature-wise it is top notch as well. You can save watchlists to keep track of specific searches and they utilize webservices to their maximum potential with data from Furl, Delicious, Buzznet and Flickr being included in searches. They also have developed a wonderful API to allow developers to include their data on their own sites.
Last year I know they went through at least two rounds of VC funding and last I heard they were valued at over $12 million. Great news for blogs. Unfortunately, there is one problem that has persisted ever since the site existed and why I believe the site is overhyped.
Update: It seems Kottke has thrown his hat into the Technorati hate mix. Wonder if people will call him the nice names they called me last week.
It rarely, if ever, works and those times you are fortunate enough to get it to work it is really slow. Sometimes they make a change that will get things working, but rest assured it will stop working again. Instead of seeing search results I am usually greeted with this message:
Sorry, we couldn’t complete your search because we’re experiencing a high volume of requests right now. Please try again in a minute or add this search to your watchlist to track conversation.
If a search engine can’t handle a high volume of requests, what purpose does it serve? Again, I love the potential that Technorati has, but that potential has been there for over a year. All I ask for is consistent service and if that means scaling back on some features then I am all for it.
I’d hate to see a repeat of dotbomb 1.0 where everyone followed the technology and money and not the execution and performance.
Tomorrow: 37signals.
*/
I recently discovered IceRocket (http://blogs.icerocket.com) which does great with the searching aspect, although it doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as Technorati. My experience as a user has been much better, though.
By Blaine Moore on August 9, 2005 11:16 am
So instead of the real, interesting, unique, positive content that makes the internet and blogging such a wonderful thing, you’re going to spend a few days writing a bunch of negative posts to generate some hype and controversy.
By Justin French on August 9, 2005 11:24 am
If by “negative” you mean not saying everything is the world’s greatest and offering constructive criticism along with how I would improve things then I guess I will spend a few days writing a bunch of “negative posts”.
However, I don’t need to generate hype for this site. Whitespace has its audience and has for a long time now. So what exactly am I trying to hype? I got flack for critiquing Zeldman’s site last year and have no doubt I will get flack for doing this series. I hate to think that you believe the web and our community only gets better with “real, interesting, unique, positive content”. Are you a better designer when people only pat your back? And what makes this series any less real, interesting, and unique than what we usually see?
As for controversy, it’s silly to think that this series will even cause a blip on anyone’s radar to even be considered controversal.
By Scrivs on August 9, 2005 11:40 am
I agree with Scrivs, and think that some negative comments are useful. 90% of the design-related articles in my Bloglines recently have been “Great new layout! Uses AJAX! Whoo!”. I’m glad to see that someone is looking beyond that.
By Matt Hampel on August 9, 2005 12:10 pm
Criticism is the only thing that ever causes anything to advance. If Technorati or Microsoft needs a boatload of yes-men I’m sure they could hire them. Scrivs is laying out his opinion which in this case is pretty correct. With all of that VC funding they could certainly build a better distributed system for handling requests.
By Josh Ferguson on August 9, 2005 12:16 pm
Altough a pat on the back and a “great job!” is always nice, I think that negative criticism is the best type of criticism to receive if you are trying to create something really outstanding, as long as it is constructive criticism. In my experience, however, most negative criticism is usually not very constructive and really serves no purpose. When redesigning a site last year, the most comments I received centered around the idea of “I don’t like blue.” Comments like that are mostly irrelevant and nearly worthless IMHO.
This article makes a lot of really good and important points. If Technorati intends to survive, they should beef up their systems so they can provide fast, consistent, and accurate results. How would you feel if 25% of the time you searched Google, it told you that they couldn’t complete your request because of high traffic and every other time, it took a long time to return the results? Why would anyone go to a page that has a ton of great content, but is inaccessible?
By Joe Lencioni on August 9, 2005 12:43 pm
I think Scrivs approach is healthy and I’m sure the people targeted can handle a bit of critism.
Now, I find today’s analysis rather disapointing. Technorati is victim of its own success ok, but that only proves that all the hype around it is well deserved.
By cedric on August 9, 2005 12:47 pm
See I would go along with the victim of their own success stuff, but it has been a really long time since I have been able to go one full month without the service breaking.
I admit to not knowing anything about network loads and whatever else they need to get things working 100%, but I do know it’s possible since every other search engine does it.
By Scrivs on August 9, 2005 12:59 pm
This has increasingly become my favorite blog to read and it’s due to your unique comments and thoughts on design and business in general. There are products & web apps out there that everybody thinks are god’s gift to the world because somebody or some company is associated with it and it’s about time somebody spoke up about it. It’s not that they are not useful, but the only way these products could live up to the hype is if they cured cancer.
By Chris Griffin on August 9, 2005 1:03 pm
I like the idea of this series, so don’t take this the wrong way.
The commentary here is pretty thin. I mean, this entry basically says one thing: “Technorati is great but their search uptime isn’t realiable.” Whoah, stop the presses.
The Start.com critique had a little more substance and the criticisms were definitely appropriate. That said,
9rules and Microsoft are not the same sized company – I’m not even sure what kind of comparison you’re trying to make. Challenges to innovation in large corporate environments aside (an interesting subject to talk about), comparing the subject of a critique to a site that you own and run doesn’t go a long way to establish credibility.
By kevin on August 9, 2005 1:04 pm
I agree that Technorati has been slow and apt to break down, and I appreciate that Scrivs isn’t a search-engine-company guru, so it’s not like you can tell them exactly what to do, only give pointers. But this does seem to be bashing a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy your articles, but this one doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere, just pointing out faults.
By David on August 9, 2005 1:14 pm
You Say in Comment #8:
From the Post:
The two statements don’t seem to match. You say it rarely works, but then qualify the service’s reliability as breaking down once a month or so. Which is it?
If it rarely works, how was I able to go on the site just now and perform about ten different searches with quickly returned results. This seems like a piece that could have flown a year ago, but not today…
By Brad Daily on August 9, 2005 2:19 pm
http://pubsub.com used to be my favourite for telling me when people were linking to me, but back when they stopped doing the live updating of ranks, things got a bit “weird”
I’m trying another pubsub subscription Atom feed again to see if it’s working once more, as Technorati would appear to be spiralling the drain…
By Richard on August 9, 2005 2:27 pm
I do agree that the criticism Scrivs brings here is a little weak, IF it were a company that ISN’T worth $12 million. If you have $12 million in funding, the least you can do is make sure your servers perform the way they are supposed to. This in itself validates the argument for me (if it’s true that they are worth $12 million).
By Josh Dura on August 9, 2005 2:35 pm
Hmm, I tried my best to show what I like about Technorati and that I saw the potential that it had. I think maybe they were growing too fast featurewise to keep up with their backend.
It rarely ever works and me going a full month without the service breaking go hand in hand. As Josh mentioned above a company that receives millions in funding should perform a bit better.
I am sure the service works for some and hell maybe it works for everyone but me. However, I can only base the service on my own experience.
By Scrivs on August 9, 2005 2:38 pm
I agree with Scrivs – Technorati is full of promise, but it is not delivering. I know that links that should be listed in Technorati’s results are notoriously absent and that I have been avoiding the site lately because it seems to be timing out every time I try to search. Great design, great ideas, mediocre execution.
By slabuda on August 9, 2005 3:25 pm
Hmph,
Tell it like it is and someone gets on your case. Really now.
I too like what technorati has to offer, but have strayed from using it, even at times forgotten about it, because of its (un)reliability.
Off I go to check it out. It’s been a while.
By Mike P. on August 9, 2005 3:44 pm
Why people feel it is necessary to jump on someone’s case for pointing out some flaws is beyond me.
I don’t see 1 thing that Scrivs has said or pointed out that promotes any kind of bashing on him.
From what I read, he pointed out the benefits of the site, and then the problems with the site.
Where’s the beef?
This is not directed toward anyone, but some people just like to take one side of an argument just for argument’s sake. They like to ‘stir’ up the pot a little, which I think is stupid.
If the pot doesn’t need stirring, keep your hand out of it.
If Scrivs would have come out and said,
“This site sucks, their design blows, I hate it, Suck my dick. Goodnight”
Then, well, there is room for negative comments, but IMO, from what I have read up above with the posting, there really isn’t a need to take that route because he didn’t bash anything. Just pointed out flaws.
By Bryan on August 9, 2005 3:59 pm
This isn’t about getting on anyone’s case for “telling it like it is.” When you are going to publicly criticize products that (probably) have teams of talented people working on them I just think the arguments and recommendations should be a little more thorough and well-formed – as well as the problem space understood.
For example, when Douglas Bowman did a critique and recoding of the microsoft.com homepage about a year ago (throwing tables out the window) he made a thorough analysis of the problems and outlined recommendations, from his point of view, about how to improve the code. If it was 4-5 paragraphs of fairly weak criticism I doubt it would have gotten as much positive attention as it did.
Also, Anil Dash’s post about “How Do We Judge Our Tools” seemed more focused on judging the success of an application from a business perspective rather than pointing out the search doesn’t scale or the drag and drop functionality has bugs.
I’m not jumping on anyone’s case but when you put a critique out in public that has negative connotations, you should be prepared to take criticism as well. It doesn’t seem like anyone has been disrespectful does it? It’s a merely a conversation with multiple opinions. I don’t disagree with the points that were made, I’m only raising questions about the context of the deliery.
By kevin on August 9, 2005 4:23 pm
Just because Scrivs didn’t have much to say about the site, doesn’t mean that he’s not giving constructive criticism. If someone wrote a post about how Whitespace is beautiful but red is disrespectful to his culture or something, would that be any less valid?
This series is about sites that are completely hyped and don’t perform in some fashion or other. Scrivs pointed out a fundamental flaw in Technorati. I think that’s rather important. He didn’t bash it. He suggested ways to fix it. What more do you want?
I’m not saying we should just listen to Scrivs and take everything he says as infallible, that would be crazy. Everyone has biases, and everyone makes mistakes. This article wasn’t biased (except for maybe Scrivs only having problems on the site himself :) ), so don’t fault him.
By Joe Clay on August 9, 2005 8:36 pm
Hell if everyone gets this worked up about Technorati I can’t wait till tomorrow with 37signals…
By Scrivs on August 9, 2005 8:39 pm
I’m looking forward to it too!
By Jason Fried on August 9, 2005 9:26 pm
I thought I’d chime in before this post gets buried in all the flaming you’ll get tomorrow. While I think that yes, more input could have been given about how to improve the site, I appreciate that Scrivs is gutsy enough to point out some flaws in a venerated institution.
Everyone loved Bomwan’s article because it was constructive in showing how Microsoft could improve its design, that’s true. But, deep down, we all loved it because it picked apart a software giant known for strong-arming not only other businesses but consumers as well.
Technorati, on the other hand, is a grass-roots, end-user focused type of venture, so when the blog-loving, open-source embracing crowd (of which I am one) sees it being picked on, we rush to their defense.
So, I guess my response to this posting favors Scrivs, but I acknowledge why everyone feels it might have been a bit unfair. Here’s to hoping you re-work 37signals’ entire business model by tomorrow (or there will be much vegitation thrown).
By Nathan Smith on August 9, 2005 11:29 pm
Of course I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but the reason I liked Bowman’s article (and others like it) so much was mainly because it was thorough, specific, and most importantly like you point out, constructive.
By kevin on August 10, 2005 12:50 am
Scrivs is gutsy enough to point out some flaws in a venerated institution
I think it is great to see articles critiquing various web offerings, and it is definitely needed. I wouldn’t call Technorati a ‘venerated instituion’, and I also wouldn’t call it gutsy.
I would call it ‘a smart way to generate some controversy’, and since controversy drives traffic, a smart bit of traffic generation.
So in a way, Justin’s comment is correct – hype and controversy. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as everybody is honest about it.
See also: Jakob Nielsen and ‘Flash is 99% Bad’.
By Mathew Patterson on August 10, 2005 3:43 am
Thanks so much for your great feedback. I appreciate all of your comments and I apologize that site performance hasn’t been good for you.
We’ve basically gotten somewhat slammed with the incredible growth we’ve been seeing, but we’re investing a lot of time and money to fix this over the next couple of months. You may have notices some improvements already, especially in keyword search. Cosmos (URL) search is what we’re working on right now.
Thanks again for the great feedback. I love getting this great honest and frank feedback from our users. You’re the best. This is great stuff that we love going over back at the office so that we can keep motivated on how to be of better service to you, and work really hard on delighting you.
Please don’t hesitate to drop me a direct email at dsifry AT technorati DOT com, or even give me a call at 415 846-0232 if there’s anything that we can do if you have any other ideas or questions…
Dave
By David Sifry on August 10, 2005 4:26 am
Dave I’m glad you are willing to accept this type of criticism. I have kept up with you for a while now and I know you are always trying to improve your “baby” so to speak. I will definitely make sure this week to drop you a line of when the problems occur.
However, I can offer my suggestions like Bowman did with Microsoft because I am not a load balancing, search engine tweaking guru, which seems to be the only way I could appease many in the crowd.
By Scrivs on August 10, 2005 7:43 am
I’m looking forward to using Technorati in the future (when it stabilizes more), because its promising to be a great resource. I’m glad the Technorati folk are willing to take some constructive criticism. I think that says a lot about them, and the integrity of their efforts.
By Kyle Posey on August 10, 2005 11:18 am
Yep. We know exactly what to do, it just takes a certain amount of machines, $$$, and time to get it right. We’ve been growing in leaps and bounds over the past few months, and we’ve been doing a pretty major overhaul over the past month or so – which you may have seen in our keyword search result times (here’s a comparative graph done by someone unaffiliated with us – http://www.webperformance.org/grabperf/ and now our focus is on Cosmos (aka URL) search. Let’s stay in touch.
And thanks for your great thoughs and feedback.
Dave
By David Sifry on August 10, 2005 11:43 am
For a web company, this shouldn’t be hard. You should have a framework that lets you deploy your software and services to n machines that will automatically load balance each other and failover. You should have caching middleware everywhere so that people running searches on your site stop hitting the database and just hit (1) static results pages, (2) db results cached before the database. You should leverage gzip compression to reduce bandwidth costs. You should have redundant DNS so that your website has no single point of failure. You should have machines spread across multiple datacenters.
Anyway, there’s a lot one can do to produce high-quality scalable software…
By Elliott Back on August 19, 2005 11:57 am