Top 10 Web 2.0 Losers Revisited: Bloglines and Technorati
Yesterday when I wrote the Top 10 Web 2.0 Losers I figured it would ruffle some feathers and bring the loyalists out, but I wasn’t quite sure for which sites. No matter how much we might think people hate a site or application there always seem to be fans around waiting to defend it and this certainly was the case with Bloglines and Technorati. When these sites were brought up the arguments for why they should not be on the list were well-thought out and made me reflect a bit more on my decision to place them on the list.
Bloglines
Bloglines has always been the leader in its field, but due to the lack of innovation their marketshare continues to dwindle and it doesn’t seem that any change is on the horizon.
More than a couple of people had a problem with this statement, including Mark Fletcher, creator of Bloglines. I suppose lack of innovation really only hurts you when the competition capitalizes on it. For as long as I can remember Bloglines has been the #1 feed referrer for this site. The top 5 looks like this:
- Bloglines 31%
- Firefox Live Bookmarks 24% (very surprising to me)
- NewsGator Online 10%
- Netvibes 7%
- Rojo 6%
With almost a third of the readers is there any reason for Bloglines to continue to innovate? When that number is steadily going down I think there is. Innovation in this since does not have to be tagging or article ranking. It can relate to minor touches such as the UI and fixing the little things that seem to bother people.
Look at Apple and it’s iPod dominance. It could easily be argued that there is absolutely no reason for Apple to continue to improve the iPod due to their market dominance and with such a simple interface all people want to do is pick up the player and play music. However, that hasn’t stopped them from pushing the device to its limits which has only kept its marketshare high.
Bloglines is fortunate that they are in a space where there are a lot of crappy options that seem to fight over the same ten people while only a few are really gaining ground. However, better interfaces are coming out and sure you don’t need to cram every feature known to man in such a simple application, but there are features that would improve the service. Bloglines has been around long enough where expecting a couple overhauls shouldn’t come as a surprise to them.
Technorati
The argument here seems to be that Technorati continues to grow so why would I put them on the list? They do great things and I use the service daily (when it’s available), but do you think those ads are going to sustain a company with a number of employees and a service that tracks over 50 millions site? Three rounds of funding and there really is still no end in site and the general public could care less if a site is a blog or an encyclopedia. They just want to go to a place and do a search on their interests and find sites that talk about it and they have that in Google and Yahoo.
Do they have it in real-time? It isn’t that far off to be honest with you. The technology is far from perfect with missing links and inaccurate statistics. I could be completely wrong about Technorati and over the years if they succeed I will be very happy for them, but I honestly don’t see that happening. Eventually someone will buy them out and hopefully the price makes all interested parties happy.
For now I will just remain skeptical.
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[...] Make sure to checkout Technorati Revisited. [...]
By Top 10 Web 2.0 Losers » Wisdump on September 25, 2006 11:12 am
Although I’m still a loyal Bloglines user, it has certainly been slipping in marketshare and I’m seeing it get trumped by Netvibes and others.
As for Technorati, I feel the service is lacking but I also feel like there isn’t much competition for it right now. I find it lacking because the ranking appears out of date, the site is often down, and my personal site data often disappears and then reappears in the system.
By Jonathan Snook on September 25, 2006 12:02 pm
When I first shopped around for an RSS Reader, I settled on Bloglines. I loved it. It was pretty easy to manage via the browser. Offered integration with Outlook… But it started getting slower and slower for me. The site would go offline at the most inopportune times (though, reading most RSS feeds is wasting time anyway). I finally decided to switch to NewsGator, where I bought FeedDemon + a subscription to the premium NewsGator Online service. It’s been worth every dollar. I can sync my feeds between my multiple machines, check them online if I want without FeedDemon…
I opted to pay for a service that would offer more features, and more reliability versus one where innovation seemed to come to a halt.
By Chris Harrison on September 25, 2006 12:19 pm
I don’t see what’s wrong with Bloglines. It does exactly what I want and just works. It has a nice mobile version. I hope they don’t go “improving” it. Another bloatware is not what I need. The tweaks they’ve added, i.e. keyboard shortcuts, have been thoughtful and useful.
By Jason Dufair on September 25, 2006 1:15 pm
Chris,
I am interested on when you moved on from Bloglines? Since the January 2006 timeframe, pretty much all of the performance issues have been fixed. If you moved on last year, I can certinally understand it, we had tons of performance problems.
Since then we have moved datacenters at the end of December 2005 we have built out many more servers, improved the architecutre, and generally made it faster. These days, Bloglines is one of the zippy-ist out there.
Paul Querna
Bloglines Engineer
By Paul Querna on September 25, 2006 1:55 pm
[...] Updates: recién hoy me avivo de que lo escrito en Wisdump es en realidad una “respuesta” o comentario a este artÃculo publicado en Wired, que menciona 5 winners y 5 losers. Vale la pena comentar también esa nota, espero poder más tarde. Además Wisdump postea hoy un “revisited” respondiendo a muchÃsimos comentarios que al igual que yo cuestionan la inclusión de Technorati y Bloglines entre los losers. [...]
By 2.0 útil… o no. « Ponte la peluka on September 25, 2006 2:53 pm
Scrivs – you say ‘look at Apple’, but what about looking at Google? When did their search interface last change? There’s loads more that they *could* do, but (as far as I can tell) they prefer to spend their energy on improving their search algorithms.
In a similar vein, I would prefer Bloglines to spend their energy on making the service 1) as fast as it can be, and 2) as usable as it can be.
Other than that, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!
By Christian Watson on September 25, 2006 4:17 pm
2) as usable as it can be.
Exactly why certain changes in the UI should be done. And Bloglines is a bit more complicated than typing in a box and getting results. It’s more of an experience (like an iPod) then a quick stop (like Google).
By Scrivs on September 25, 2006 5:20 pm
I love Bloglines, but agree the UI could do with a) being prettier and b) handling leaving the page better. If you accidently open a link in the same window and then click back, all your unread messages have just vanished. Show “session” seems to have an exceptionally long idea of session.
That aside, none of the web readers comes anywhere close to it.
By bonaldi on September 25, 2006 6:02 pm
I’ve used Bloglines daily for years. Their addition of hotkeys to jump through your feeds and posts is awesome. They seem to make subtle improvements all of the time. No complaints here!
By --Josh on September 25, 2006 6:49 pm
[...] Make sure to checkout Bloglines Revisited. [...]
By carsandcheap.info » Latest news on September 25, 2006 7:05 pm
I would agree that no doubt there are usability improvements that can be made to Bloglines (like just about anything) – although I would be hard pressed to come up with anything significant.
As a regular user of Bloglines I treat it as more of a quick stop than an experience – see what’s new, take a quick look to see if there’s anything worth reading, and then move on.
So, in that respect, maybe it is *more* like Google than you think. To your point, what sort of ‘experience’ you would like to create for Bloglines users?
I’d also be careful about dismissing Google so out of hand. Just because something looks simple doesn’t necessarily mean that it is – especially when it comes to laying out the search results pages.
I actually have a great deal of respect for how Google has maintained the simplicity of its home page. From my experience running the web site and intranet for a large(ish) organization, I know the pressures that can be put on you to keep adding stuff to the home page without consideration for what will be useful to users.
By Christian Watson on September 25, 2006 7:17 pm
Crikey.
> “Look at Apple and it’s iPod dominance… that hasn’t stopped them from pushing the device to its limits which has only kept its marketshare high.”
Seriously? I don’t think limited photo, video and games capabilities constitute a great return for 5 years worth of “pushing the device to its limits”. It’s pretty much exactly what it is when it launched: 1,000 songs in your pocket. Yes, it’s now more songs, and yes, your pocket is now lighter (and your wallet a little fatter), but Apple certainly haven’t had to innovate. It’s just no-one else has made anything good enough to force them to innovate.
By pauldwaite on September 26, 2006 12:25 pm
I agree with your Scrives. Netvibes is a million times better than Bloglines. The whole web based desktop is gaining popularity and Netvibes are one of the best I’ve seen…
By jmaonline on September 27, 2006 2:15 am
I use Technorati quite a bit, and the difference between Technorati and Google is 1) the tagging – I get info about a subject rather than something that have happened to include the same word, and 2) ordering – if I follow a subject, I want to know what is _new_ and what people talk about, not what people wrote a reference page about five years ago.
Different applications entirely. Whether Technorati can get people to see the difference is an open question, but they only need a fraction of Google’s traffic to be able to sustain a fairly good sized organization.
On another note: I work at Edgeio. Thanks for the 5K+ visitors your link to Edgeio in the last post brought so far, btw. ;) Obviously I think you completely missed the plot about us. In particular, those Chinese listings aren’t spam, but well, Chinese listings. Spam has been an extremely small problem for us so far.
If you want local listings, then set your location. The geography widget is there for a reason. And a Chinese site is right around the corner.
As for people posting listings on their blogs, they do, but where did you get the idea that it’s the only (or even the biggest) source of listings for us? In fact the vast majority of listings come from professionals, for many of whom the tiny effort to get data into Edgeio by turning it into feeds is already paying off.
By Vidar Hokstad on September 27, 2006 9:52 am
I’ve been pretty disappointed with bloglines too, for quite a while. They’ve been happy trudging along with their old school app, oblivious to the “Web 2.0″ links people are following day-in and day-out when using bloglines.
I remember at SXSW 2006 there was a panel on RSS: Not Just For Blogs Anymore. On the panel was some marketing person from bloglines, and I was bitching and moaning about how bloglines is hard to use and never improved (UI-wise). I think the people around me thought I was some crazy dude bitching about the silliest things. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one.
There is really only one thing keeping me with bloglines: mark all as read. Google Reader, wtf? People have been bitching about that for nearly a year now!
By Justin Perkins on September 27, 2006 10:22 am
I couldn’t agree with you more about Bloglines. Although I continue to use Bloglines as my daily feedreader, I have searched the Internet from top to bottom for a suitable replacement more than once. This is an occurence that should warn Bloglines that maybe they should start improving the site. Someday, some company will realize what features, look and appeal are needed to takeover the web-based feed reader throne, and when they do, I guarantee that Bloglines, as it is today, will see a mass exodus. I hope Mark Fletcher takes notice of your comments.
By AdverseE on September 28, 2006 1:44 pm
I use Bloglines almost every day. I really like the mobile version. It is fast works well and has had been improved over the last year.
I’ll have to agree with you on the look of the “full” site though, it could use the services of a good designer. However, it works and it’s available for me on my Treo and home and work computers without having to load extra software or worry about synchronization.
By Tanny O'Haley on September 28, 2006 5:47 pm
[...] Have you read wisdump’s article on Top 10 Web 2.0 Losers Revisited: Bloglines and Technorati? I have to agree with wisdump that Bloglines have not been keeping up with user’s needs, and their services offering will no longer meeting the ever changing user’s needs and likes. [...]
By Here’s what I would do to make Bloglines 2.0 at internetfamous.net on October 10, 2006 8:31 am
I am a long time Bloglines user and it certainly is not a loser. I wish Google or yahoo had bought it. They made a HUGE mistake by not buying it. Bloglines is a full winner for the simple reason that there is absolutly no viable competitor. Google Reader really sucks. Firefox Live Bookmarks can be set up with Bloglines and both combines are awesome
By Guillaumeb on December 14, 2006 7:14 pm
[...] Make sure to checkout Bloglines Revisited. [...]
By Giovanni Ghirardi » Blog Archive » I perdenti nell’era del Web 2.0 on February 18, 2007 8:04 am