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.
Originally posted on August 9, 2005 @ 10:46 am