The Inquisitr » technorati

Technorati Japan closing

Duncan Riley — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:54:33 +0000

Technorati has announced that it is closing its Japanese service as part of a shift in focus towards running a leaner operation.

In a blog post on the Technorati Japan blog, the company said it was difficult to develop and support the Japanese version of the site under the new company structure and that the site would cease operations October 23.

“We would like to apologize to all our members and users for the inconvenience caused and, at the same time, thank you for your patronage,” the post read.

The move follow Technorati’s announcement of a new look and ranking system yesterday. The new look Technorati is the first major change for the core site under current CEO Richard Jalichandra.

The Technorati content play is good for the blogosphere

Duncan Riley — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:56:52 +0000

Some parts of the blogosphere are aghast today over news that Technorati is hiring bloggers to add original content to Technorati.com

The normally sensible Boris over at The Next Web claims that Technorati is “biting the hand that feeds it” and has had “an unclear strategy for the future” until now. From the outside I can see to some degree where he’s coming from, but that analysis ignores Technorati’s public behavior under current CEO Richard Jalichandra.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Richard nearly two weeks ago in Technorati’s office in San Francisco. Much of what he told me was off the record, so I can’t repeat all of it. I should also disclose at this stage that Technorati sells our ads here at The Inquisitr. The content play is hardly new, even based on what is currently on the public record.

Technorati strategically shifted with the change of leadership around 2 years ago from a company that seemingly reinvented itself every six months without really having a strong revenue stream, to a company that helped bloggers with more than stats: they started selling ads. Technorati Media was born, and despite not getting a lot of attention, they now count among their number some big blog properties, including the Pet Holdings blogs (I Can Has Cheeseburger, Failblog and more.) They are, at least according to the stats they provided me, among the largest blog ad companies now by volume of traffic.

Ads are only one part of the puzzle, with the content play being the other. Ad networks work best with more inventory; yes, quality comes into that equation, but likewise if you don’t have scale, quality doesn’t mean much. Technorati’s interest in owning content (and therefore inventory) following the move into advertising is best demonstrated when Technorati acquired BlogCritics in August 2008; until recently I always thought that acquisition was a little strange, but Richard explained that it gave them a base from which to learn about what works and doesn’t work with advertising, and it turned out to be a great buy for them.

Blogcritics wasn’t alone though, because Technorati nearly acquired a bigger property again: b5media in April 2008. The TechCrunch coverage is here; that story would have been written by me but I passed it on at the time due to the possibility of a conflict of interest with b5media. I’ve heard the story about the failed acquisition from both sides, and I can’t publicly comment on it, only to say that it went very, very close to happening. The acquisition of b5media by Technorati was primarily an inventory play; Technorati would have purchased a company that at its peak was doing somewhere around 20 million page views a month, a perfect base to build an ad network on.

I’m not aware of any other blog acquisitions Technorati has looked at, but I’d be surprised if they didn’t look at others along the way. Quality blog properties with a ton of traffic that are open to sale aren’t exactly thick on the ground, so we get to the stage that Technorati is hungry for inventory, but either hasn’t been able to buy sites, or has simply moved on to the next stage: creating that inventory themselves, based on the knowledge they acquired by buying Blogcritics.

Is Technorati really biting the hand that feeds them? Zee writes “Whatever their plans are it’s a risky strategy to compete with the same blogs you are tracking. I would have also appreciated it if Technorati would have focused on improving their current services first,” but that analysis completely ignores the fact that Technorati today is primarily an ad network. I should note though that Technorati isn’t ignoring its public blog tracking services, and I’m told by Richard that they are working on new (and dare I say exciting without disclosing what they are) initiatives there, some of which will be available before the end of the year.

Technorati going into content doesn’t bite the hand that feeds them, and the outcome is quite the opposite: Technorati with content not only offers jobs to bloggers directly, but better still the advertising side grows, and the more it grows the better Technorati is able to service existing and future publishers of Technorati Media. I for one want strong advertising companies that understand blogging and bloggers, and Technorati is setting itself up to be one of the leading advertising companies in the space.

Technorati, the little service that couldn’t

Steven Hodson — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:37:49 +0000

At one time regardless of the number of new bloggers that poop-up up a daily basis one of the first ting we all did was to sign up for a Technorati account. This was the best way at the time to see how well our blog(s) where doing against the rest of ht blogosphere. It was out of the Technorati listings that we first got use to the term of a-Listers as well has our own ranking based on the number of discovered links that linked back to our posts..

Over the years though as the service tried to find new ways to make relevant to bloggers of all types that have showily moved further and further away from their core business – being an valuable ranking system an blog discovery system for other bloggers. Unfortunately even with their new leadership this divergence for the core business has progressed even further; with the individual becoming secondary to mainstream media being the driving force for a service barely limping.

In fact if you look at the numbers that have been collected by Dean Takahashi from the VentureBeat Blog it is easy to see that rather than the individual blogger; or the small blog networks it is all about mainstream publication taking over the ranking systems. In his breakdown Dean provides the numbers for the last 30 days – as well as the gainers and losers.

New to the top 50
The Dallas Morning News
San Jose Mercury News
Star Tribune

Out of the top 50
US News & World Report
Rolling Stone
Christian Science Monitor
International Herald Tribune (now part of nytimes.com)

Five biggest gainers in rank
PBS
The Houston Chronicle
Google News
NY Post
Slate

Five biggest losses in rank
The Economist
Chicago Tribune
The White House
Financial Times
Newsweek

Five biggest gainers in attention
YouTube
The Wall Street Journal
CNN
LA Times
Wired

Five biggest losses in attention
Reuters
Telegraph.co.uk
The Boston Globe
Financial Times
The Economist

Overall Rankings and Attention
1.   YouTube 60,644
2.   The New York Times 17,374
3.   guardian.co.uk 8,039
4.   The Wall Street Journal 7,513
5.   The Washington Post 6,891
6.   CNN 6,330
7.   Telegraph.co.uk 5,380
8.   Yahoo! News 5,070
9.   MSNBC 5,036
10. The Los Angeles Times 4,536
11. Reuters 4,314
12. FOX News 4,001
13. The Boston Globe 3,838
14. USA Today 3,619
15. Daily Mail 3,530
16. Time 3,524
17. BBC News 3,399
18. NPR 3,189
19. NY Daily News 2,588
20. Forbes 2,534
21. San Francisco Chronicle 2,420
22. Slate 2,187
23. CBS News 2,156
24. Google News 2,093
25. Wired 2,062
26. Financial Times 2,056
27. PBS 2,053
28. NY Post 2,025
29. San Francisco Examiner 1,968
30. BusinessWeek 1,949
31. The White House 1,929
32. Salon 1,928
33. Chicago Tribune 1,924
34. Newsweek 1,880
35. CNNMoney 1,712
36. CBC 1,696
37. Yahoo! Finance 1,642
38. The Economist 1,565
39. New York Magazine 1,550
40. philly.com 1,288
41. The Houston Chronicle 1,120
42. Science Daily 1,093
43. MarketWatch 1,076
44. People 1,066
45. Miami Herald 1,049
46. The Seattle Times 1,049
47. Yahoo! Sports 1,047
48. The Dallas Morning News 939
49. San Jose Mercury News 879
50. Star Tribune 877

These are the top mover and shakers of the Technorati service, and where even a really a year a go you could still find some of the big name tech bloggers it would seem that those day’s are long gone.

Technorati launches Wiki like service for tag pages

Duncan Riley — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:13:17 +0000

Technorati have added a wiki style feature to tag pages, allowing users to add content to every tag page in Technorati’s index.

According to Technorati:

bloggers and authors can now write original Wikipedia-style tag articles and reference blurbs and have them appear on Technorati.com tag pages. Tag pages compile content from the blogosphere (posts, photos, videos, blogs) around any tag. A tag article provides an overview of the tag, and the relevance of the tag topic to the blogosphere.

Each entry includes the members name, and link to their site, in theory offering traffic and SEO opportunities for those participating.

Oddly though, while you can add a short blurb to each page, you need to sign up to Blogcritics to submit a full and primary entry.

A logical value add, and should be well received by users.

Technorati

NewsGator Launches AdBurner: Wide 2.0 Ad Service

Duncan Riley — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:19:23 +0000

NewsGator has launched AdBurner, an advertising solution that seeks to optimizes ad placement, management, and revenue across any platform.

Adburner is aimed at optimizing the CPM for, and process of, inserting and managing advertising into NewsGator’s publisher products suite, including services including widgets, related content, and iPhone applications.

Launch partners include Technorati Media, Admeld, Gigya, Medialets, and Tremor Media.

NewsGator says the premise behind the creation of AdBurner is “the realization that a significant roadblock for media companies attempting to monetize social media and mobile applications has been the lack of process standards and optimization methods for inserting and tracking ad placements.”

Ads offered in the network include display ads, video pre-roll and overlays, widget ads, and iPhone display ads.

NewsGator

Blogging tools suck wind

Steven Hodson — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:42:26 +0000

There’s been a minor discussion going on within the tech blogosphere about some of the tools that we as bloggers look to in order for our content to reach our readers as quickly as possible. As well the whole idea about blog searching rather than just general search has had a post or two written about its sad state. I would go one step further and suggest that in general the tools that bloggers use on a daily basis pretty much suck wind.

Yes I know – bloggers are a minority in the larger scheme of the Internet and as a result there is no real financial incentive for startups; or established web companies, to consider dedicating services to make our lives easier. Much of the discussion that is going on was started by Steve Gillmor but it was Dave Winer who pinpointed specifically to RSS and Feedburner; which gave him a chance to espouse on his favourite theme of federation. While he was willing to give Feedburner / Google a break because of the holidays I personally don’t think that a company the size of Google needs it.

The fact is that Feedburner sucks. Some days are worse than others but in the general run of the mill day to day operation Feedburner isn’t living up to expectations. Not only has the very distribution of our posts become flaky at times the reporting of subscriber numbers goes up and down worse than a hooker on a Friday night. It looks though that Dave has decided to look into creating a federated Feedburner clone so only time will tell if it is only a matter of competition that is required to get Google to wake up and deal with the problems.

However it’s not just whether our RSS feeds are easily discoverable and reported on or not. Another big area of contention within the blogosphere is the current state of blog search. At one time Technorati was the big dog on the block in this arena but is has slowly been relegated to a company confused about its direction. This is where the fact that it isn’t financially feasible for a company to solely depend on the blogosphere to make it stable and attractive to buyers. More than once we have heard the rumours about Technorati being up for sale but nothing comes of it and they still fail to a large degree in blog search.

While Google’s BlogSearch might be marginally better it suffers from the same problem that Technorati does – too much damn garbage polluting any results. On top of that BlogSearch is rumoured to include things BlogRolls (the list of blogs you see in some blog sidebars) and every other bit of nonsense that litter the blogs out there. Half the time if I’m going searching for something to do with blog articles I turn first to FeedDemon’s built in search of my subscribed to feeds. Chances are I will actually find what I am looking for instead of having to be left to the vagaries of Google’s BlogSearch or Technorati’s splog listings.

I agree fully with Rob Diana who said in his post on LouisGray.com

However, I think the conversation regarding "finding links" is missing something. What do we really want in blog searching? Are we only searching for links to our posts? Are we searching for blogs that are talking about a specific topic? Are we just searching for new blogs to read? Are we really just trying to find out where our blog ranks, like Technorati’s authority?

Part of the problem is that we are focusing on one issue with blog search. Basic link searching will probably always suck because of the problem with spam blogs. They will add links to some sites and detract from others. Spam is just a hard problem to fight, so we probably will have to live with some of those problems. The other questions are much more interesting, but I am not sure that people really want those types of features. Do we want to use something like Technorati to find new blogs?

I know for me when I go searching it is not links I am looking for – I get plenty of those from FriendFeed and Twitter – no .. I’m looking for information or some post that has been written. the problem is when using any of the services out there right now I am faced with having to slog my way through pages and pages of bullshit.

In today’s current climate bloggers are in desperate need of a reliable way to get what they have written in front of their readers eyeballs as quickly as possible. This means that we need a Feedburner – or clone – that will actually work all of the time not just when it feels like it. A large majority of us all need to know that the numbers that are being reported are accurate and up to date as we rely on those numbers to, in part earn our living. As well our time is our most valuable commodity and the less time we have to spend wading through crap search results is priceless.

It’s too bad that our tools we need everyday can’t seem to keep up.

Blogging Predictions for 2009

Duncan Riley — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:40:48 +0000

Where will blogging head in the next year? Using my crystal ball here’s my list for 2009.

1. The rise of the uberblogs

This prediction has its own post here. I’m convinced that at the top of the blogosphere this will be THE big trend this year, and we’ll finally see new media challenging old media head on because of it.

2. Increased uptake in Commenting 2.0 services

2008 was really the first year commenting 2.0 services really took off, but they are still have minor market share across the blogosphere. In 2009 people will be looking for better ways of enabling the conversation, and commenting services like Disqus, Sezwho, JS-Kit and IntenseDebate will thrive.

3. Consolidation in Commenting 2.0 services/ acquisitions

The increased interest in commenting 2.0 though will see consolidation in the sector as one or two services win most of the new business. This could mean consolidation as one or more services close, but more likely we’ll see IP buys in the field. Intense Debate has already been acquired by Automattic, so they’re off the list. SixApart will acquire one of these services given any of them would be a perfect fit alongside SixApart products and other SixApart acquisitions. My bet: SixApart will acquire Disqus. Don’t count out Technorati as a possible acquirer either for similar reasons.

4. Facebook to become major blog service player

We’re only now just starting to see the first stage of Facebook Connect services, including the ability to use Facebook accounts to comment on blogs. My prediction is that Facebook integration into blogs will explode in 2009 as more services seek to tap in to Facebook, and as Facebook wants to extend its presence onto blogs. We’ve already seen a Facebook written WordPress plugin (not sure if this has been released yet, but it was leaked at one stage), expect more from Facebook. The key here is that Facebook, facing a slow down in 2009 will want to be everywhere to maximize its exposure and use.

5. The traditional blog layout will decline

We’ve already seen the rise of the magazine layout for blogs; in 2009 the availability of alternate layouts to a traditional blog layout will thrive, and the ability of users to implement these will get easier (WordPress is making a lot of these tasks easier now). We’ll see a lot of variations on the theme, many not really being magazine in style, but we’ll still be calling them that because magazine theme has become a generic term for anything not traditional. For a couple of examples of interesting variations, see Gawker and Huffington Post.

6. Technorati will be acquired

It wouldn’t be a predictions list from me without an entry that suggests Technorati will be acquired. Every year I’ve predicted this I’ve been wrong, but I’m more confident in 2009. Having failed to complete a merger with b5media is 2008, my guess is Technorati’s investors are looking for an out. Having entered the blog advertising field with Technorati Media (disclosure they provide our ads…well some of them) and the acquisition of Ad Engage (now Technorati Engage), Technorati is building revenue streams and becomes more appealing for an exit. My guess: they’ll be acquired by an ad network or metrics company, more likely the first option though.

7. SixApart overhauls MovableType, becomes a player again

SixApart has done some great things this year, and despite my history with the company (and probably even to this day me not being overly popular there) I can say at the close of 2008 that they’re now one of my favorite companies in the space. The release of MovableType as open source opened the community door at SixApart, but the platform still lacks for user friendliness…particularly with templating.

My prediction is that seeing how successful WordPress continues to be, SixApart will release a new version of MovableType, or even a completely new, PHP based blogging platform that will take the good fight to WordPress. SixApart is already working hard in development, having recently released a lifestreaming platform, I’m betting even better is ahead.

8. Widget providers will fall

There has been far too many blog widget providers in the market for far too long, and with 2009 going to be tough for funding, many will fall. No names, because I don’t know the economics of each, but this space most consolidate.

9. Old Media will acquire a record number of blogs

Blogging as a business proposition becomes even more appealing in 2009 due to its low costs and high appeal. Old media is about to face its worst year on record, and those with cash to spare will acquire blogs in an attempt to broaden their business base online.

My guess in tech blogging is that we’ll see at least two A-list blogs/ blog networks acquired. Silicon Alley Insider is top of my list: lean operation, high yield readership even with the economic crisis, and a nice fit in with a newspaper group or TV station. NBC or News Corp for the buy. Mashable and VentureBeat possibles; I like Mashable on the acquisition front because of the broader appeal and higher traffic.

Below the top we’ll see lots of smaller acquisitions, strategic plays where blogs join the bigger entity in a complimentary fashion.

Also don’t rule out advertisers and advertising firms buying in the space either; what better way to place advertising than to own the place you want to advertise.

10. The Inquisitr will become Australia’s largest independent blog by traffic

Actually, it might already be close, hard to tell. News Ltd newspapers will threaten to sue us again, we’ll continue to not link to them, and if I’m really lucky, Fairfax (Australia’s second largest newspaper group) might take a stake, presuming they don’t fold in the mean time. That will give us access to AFP/ AP and Reuters content, and allow us to grow to 10 million page views. About mid year we’ll run topless photos of a celebrity and get blocked by the Australian Government’s Great Firewall of Australia, resulting in a large VPN bill for me to run the site….or we’ll relocate to New Zealand

Twingly: Nice Try, shame about the results

Duncan Riley — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:35:02 +0000

Swedish blog search engine Twingly has decidedto take on Technorati with its own Top 100 blogs list and blog ranking service.

Using its index of blog relationships, Twingly calculates a blogs worth via link juice and likes, giving each blog a Google Page Rank style rank out of 10. The top 100 list takes that data and offers direct competition to Technorati.

Twingly defines itself as being a spam free index and claim that their rank system has trust because of their methods.

Before anyone suggests that comparing them to Technorati in unfair, they do, trash talking Technorati in an interview with The Blog Herald by saying things like “Technorati do what they do well” but “Technorati Authority is just a number that don’t say so much.”

Here’s my issue: if you’re going to compare yourself to others, its helps that your results match the rhetoric. They don’t.

According to Twingly, The Inquisitr has a grand total of 304 incoming links. Technorati records 3,711 (although the Technorati figure may include multiple links from the same blog). The Technorati Authority number for The Inquisitr (a number that counts blogs linking in without duplicates) shows 1,857 for the last 6 months. So either 1,553 spam blogs link to The Inquistr (84% of all links) or Twingly’s index is bollocks and therefore its top 100 list lacks serious credibility. It goes without saying that without evidence to the contrary I’d suggest it’s likely the latter.

It’s always good to see new players in this space, and I do wish the service well, but this isn’t an accurate measure of the blogosphere, by a very long mile.

Technorati acquires AdEngage, expanding ad mix

Duncan Riley — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:59:56 +0000

Technorati has acquired advertising service AdEngage, their first bolt on acquisition for their advertising network Technorati Media.

Founded in 2004, AdEngage offers a variety of self service advertising options, including 125px spots, text and “Photext” ads, which combine text and photos in the one ad unit. The site offers units at set rates or on a CPC basis, and serves over 12 billion impressions a month.

Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra said in a post that Technorati would use the AdEngage platform to expand Technorati Media’s offering, starting with an expansion of their advertising business from higher traffic sites, deeper into the long tail. Technorati Engage will launch with a the text and Photext products, with the 125px spots to follow, and will be offered in a closed beta initially, until they’re ready to completely open it up. Blogs can apply here, and must meet Technorati Media guidelines detailed here.

Let me disclose in the post that Technorati Media is the exclusive provider of US inventory for The Inquisitr, and although I haven’t checked the fine print, there’s probably parts of it that prevent me from saying too much about our relationship with them. Even if there isn’t, I’m not going to discuss it in detail out of professional courtesy anyway. I will say this though: the network is fairly new, and the team are responsive, good to work with, and are regularly looking at ways of improving the product. The inclusion of AdEngage, which I presume will extend to existing Technorati Media clients, offers the one thing missing so far from Technorati Media’s mix: 125px ads. I didn’t like having to get rid of existing advertisers when we signed the deal with Technorati because those units weren’t available, and hopefully once the 125px spots come on line we can bring some of them back.

Technorati

The Inquisitr is now in the Technorati Top 1000

Duncan Riley — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:36:57 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that at some stage in the last 24 hours, The Inquisitr has entered the top 1000 blogs on the planet according to Technorati.

As I write this, The Inquisitr is ranked at 995th. By the time you may be reading this it may have shifted in either direction, although we’re confident that number will keep going down, at least for the short term.

The number is calculated on 6 months worth of links, and it was always our goal to hit the top 1000 by the 6 month mark. We’ve done it at 5 months and 1 week.

My thanks to our great team who has helped The Inquisitr get where it is today, but most importantly, a big thank you to you, our readers, who without your support and links along the way, this wouldn’t have been possible.

If you’re interested in advertising on The Inquisitr, see the details here

Technorati numbers highlight the changing nature of blogging

Duncan Riley — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:02:55 +0000

There’s lies, damn lies, and Technorati statistics…at least that’s the line I would have traditionally run over the last 5 years covering Technorati State of the Blogosphere reports. And yet today, Technorati under Richard Jalichandra is looking the best it has for years, and their ability to track accurate numbers has improved vastly. This is not to say that they are perfect, but they have more authority now. Notably, the index has cleaned up spam blogs, so numbers out of Technorati are no longer skewed by millions of autogenerated blogs.

The first part of the 2008 State of the Blogosphere report has been released, and the numbers show some interesting trends. The primary number is that active blogging (as measured by Technorati) is in decline. According to Technorati, only 1.5 million blogs have been updated in the last 7 days, out of 133 million blogs tracked. The number over 120 days goes out to 7.4 million blogs, but it’s still a small number in the bigger scheme of things, particularly in 2008. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb goes so far as to headline his post “Technorati Numbers Indicate Blogging Is Niche and Slowing” and at first glance it wouldn’t be hard to agree.

But the headline is wrong. Blogging isn’t declining, nor is it in any way, shape or form niche. The numbers highlight the changing nature of blogging, and an evolution into a social media space today where we may see a decline in stand-alone blogging, but not to the exclusion of blogging as a concept. The definition of blogging is the challenge, and Technorati doesn’t track the new wave of blogging platforms.

Blogging as a social networking service

Years ago I got into an argument about what should be included in a count of blogs. At the time MySpace was growing rapidly, and offered blogging as a standard feature. I argued then that if MySpace users were using the blogging feature within MySpace, that their blogs should count in any collective assessment on the state of the blogging world. Years later, MySpace blogs still aren’t tracked by Technorati, and yet there are hundreds of millions of users on MySpace: even if a small percentage blog, and a smaller percentage again do so regularly, we’ve could have just easily doubled the active blog counts in this report.

That blogging was offered as a service within a social networking site in 2004 was a novelty, but in 2008, there’s very few social networking platforms that don’t offer their users a blog, or the ability to undertake blogging like activity. Where as in the past, if you wanted a blog you had a stand alone blog, say self hosted or on a service such as Blogger, today blogging is everywhere. As people have found alternative blogging platforms within social networks, some have abandoned their stand alone blogs and switched instead to blogging within social networks….and yet they aren’t counted here.

Social sharing

I post a thought or a link to a page that can be seen by others. Readers can comment under the original entry. The item can be linked to, is indexed by Google, and has its own URL. Sounds like a simple description for a blog doesn’t it, but I didn’t just describe a blog, I described FriendFeed. Social sharing sites are part of the evolution of blogging, and at their core are really hosted blogs with improved sharing and networking. Every activity on FriendFeed is blog like, but they’re not counted in blog numbers. Why is FriendFeed or similar services excluded when we consider any “decline” in blogging. Like the social networking sites, FriendFeed highlights the changing nature of blogging, away from a standalone site towards the social space, and these sites are booming.

Micro-blogging

We might argue over the use of the term “micro-blogging” to describe services like Twitter, and yet the name serves a purpose. Twitter is part of the evolution of blogging, and micro-blogging can be pointed to as one of the driving forces behind the decline of traditional stand alone blogs. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that many Twitter users now blog less. We know that Twitter users are more likely to share a funny link or quick thought on Twitter where in the past they would have shared via their stand alone blogs. Twitter has become a substitute for much of the noise that use to happen in the blogopshere, but Twitter isn’t counted in the blog numbers. We may not call posting to Twitter blogging, but it shares a common genealogy with blogging itself, and is a blogging type activity.

Conclusion

The challenge for those of us who work in the blogosphere is to address the notion, presented in these numbers, that somehow blogging has past its peak. Traditional blogging has past its peak, and it was always going to, but people are not participating less, they are actually participating more, and blogging, and blogging like activities are more popular than they have ever been. The new blogosphere is social, interconnected, and more varied than we could ever have imagined.

The Inquisitr teams with Technorati Media for ad sales

Duncan Riley — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:40:53 +0000

I’m pleased to announced that The Inquisitr has signed an ad sales deal with Technorati Media, the advertising arm of long standing blog search engine Technorati. Under the deal, Technorati Media has exclusive rights over all our US inventory for the next 6 months.

I’d been hearing good things about Technorati Media around the place, but after a strong recommendation from Steve Spalding at Gnomedex I contacted them and we went from there. Most of the ad units are now live, and although we’ve come in prior to the 4th quarter ad buys, Technorati is serving ads on the site now.

It’s too early for me to recommend Technorati Media as a service you should use, but the professionalism of the team, and their patience to date speaks well of the company. The ultimate test will be time, but certainly I wouldn’t have signed the agreement if I wasn’t fairly confident, so take that as a part recommendation

Transitional arrangements

Effective immediately we will not be selling against US impressions. If you’re interesting in buy ads, please contact Technorati Media directly. The ad sales page will be shortly updated. We obviously have a number of 125px advertisers on the site, and these units will be phased out over the next few weeks, while honoring the remaining periods on each ad. Our thanks to existing advertisers Allinfo, Themeforest, Cosmic Tap and WonderHowTo for their support, and we’d encourage you to check out every one of them. Also thanks to our previous sponsors as well.

I’m still not 100% sure on what to do with the non-US ad impressions, which can vary from 10% of traffic one day, to 35% the next. For the moment we’re running a mix of Adsdaq and Adsense, but certainly if you’re interested in non-US traffic I’m always open to proposals.

Recommended advertising networks

We’ve come a fairly long way since I asked the question about why blog advertising is so difficult in 2008, then later called for interest in forming a blog advertising group. We had some great expressions of interest from that post, but not enough numbers to make it work; my thanks to all those who expressed their interest if I haven’t thanked you previously.

There are two services I’ve used since starting The Inquisitr I’m happy to recommend, although with the proviso that you can do better with a direct deal like we have with Technorati Media, but not everyone can get those sorts of deals.

The first provider is BuySellAds.com, who have dutifully provided the ad serving and sales platform for our 125px spots. They do take a cut from your sales, but you get your blog listed on their site and this does help sales. After switching to them from direct sales we doubled our 125px sales rate. Good people who are happy to help, and I’m more than happy to recommend them.

The second service is Adsdaq from ContextWeb. You wont get personal service from them, but the idea works. With Adsdaq, you nominate the price you want for your ad units, and they place ads based on that price. Where they can’t place ads for you, the units revert to Adsense or what ever other advertising service you use. Depending on the traffic and month, they’ve managed to serve roughly 20-30% of our inventory at rates higher than anything I’d managed to get before. It’s the only service I can recommend that you can’t lose on, because if they can’t fill your inventory at the price, you get what you were getting before. Worth a look.

Also a shout out for Buzzlogic who is doing some interesting things. We’ve popped up on their list of clients, which is nice, and we did run a 125px unit from them which was returning some nice rates. My only issue with the program when I tested it was a lack of ad sizes, with the only units offered a 125px, and two skyscrappers. This may have changed now though.

Technorati

Technorati, Feedburner Suffer Technical Difficulties

Duncan Riley — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:24:33 +0000

Popular blogging services Feedburner and Technorati as both currently experience service difficulties.

RSS tracking service Feedburner has dramatically reduced reported subscriptions across a range of blogs, including The Inquisitr. Zoli Erdos reports that FeedBurner is missing Google FeedFetcher stats, the number of users who read a blog in Google Reader. The usual early morning feed count update was delayed today with the service reporting 0 subscribers for longer that usual, perhaps while attempting to gather Google subscription data. We can only wait until tomorrow to see if the issue will be corrected.

Technorati at the time of writing has not updated incoming links for the last day. The oldest incoming links on a range of blogs show 1 day, and nothing newer. Incoming link counts have been affected, with data showing lower rankings for sites, perhaps showing historical data from a backup server. Allen Stern from Centernetworks noted on FriendFeed that this happens fairly regularly, although usually a refresh fixes the problem, where as today the data is just stuck there.

If we hear anything on either story, we’ll update this post.

Technorati

More Money For Technorati? Really?

Duncan Riley — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:23:42 +0000

Allen Stern reports over at Centernetworks today that old school occasional blog search engine Technorati has taken $7.5 million Series D. Total funding to date is at approx $30 million. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mobius Venture Capital, and FG Incubation.

Others are being rather unkind to Technorati, joking that many didn’t even know the site was still going. That’s a little unfair, but having said that I’ve only started using it again recently as a way to track incoming links for The Inquisitr. Before May I hadn’t used it for years, having long since switched to Google Blog Search.

Technorati has a colorful history, being really the first blog search engine of any significance (it was there when I started blogging in late 02, early 03) then after taking a couple of rounds it desperately tried to reinvent itself over and over again in an attempt to make money. The site switched back to blog search in December 2007.

Earlier this year Technorati announced it was going into the blog advertising game and I had a conversation with CEO Richard Jalichandra some time thereafter about the product: nice chap, but the conversation lacked substance and there was absolutely nothing I could use for a post. As far as I know Technorati’s only advertising partner is Blog Catalog, and nothing publicly has been said about the advertising network since. Perhaps the launch of the advertising network is what the new round is for?

I will make one observation though, in 2008, like 2005, Technorati is still broken. As a now regular user the number of times I see the message “the Technorati Monster has escaped again” is beyond a joke. How can a company which at its core is a blog search engine still have not lifted their game after all these years? To me, Technorati is a bit like Twitter, I’ll always have a soft spot for it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t seriously broken. Twitter is a long shot at being fixed, Technorati search has been on life support for years. Here’s hoping the ad network takes off and that the income produced might one day be used to fix Technorati at its core.