Sorry, Technorati, but while I want to root for you and give you praise, it's just not going to happen tonight. Because tonight, Google Blog Search is giving your behind a serious bruising.Google Blog Search is easily proving to be the best way to find out who is talking about a topic, and who is linking my way, much more than you are. While you were once my go-to for so many things, my every click through your site is now like strolling through a museum, hoping not to touch anything, for fear it may fall down and become damaged.
The Case Against Technorati:
Once the premiere site for tracking tags, topics, and blog popularity, Technorati could be counted on to see who was discussing a story, or linking to the blog, ahead of anyone in the world. Now, Google Blog Search not only is indexing stories more quickly than Technorati, and getting them into Google, but it's doing it more effectively, in more quantity, period.
Tonight's Example:
Source: Technorati
There's no question the hubbub around ReadBurner, and my unveiling of it, has been noisy in the last day and a half. But if you checked Technorati, the only way you would even know it had taken place is through a single note from the official Readburner blog, titled "ReadBurner Updates", where Alexander writes, "The unintended alpha leak of ReadBurner through louisgray.com gave my “hobby project” the boost it needed, development-wise."
Elsewhere, we also see positive comments from Oliver Thylmann, who discusses an older article in his summary, "A few interesting predictions for 2008". He kindly says, "(Louis's) 10 Predictions for 2008 rock, especially as they are really clear, and sometimes weird." Bob Stumpel of Everything 2.0 also liked the predictions in a list he titled 500+ Technology Predictions for 2008 and Beyond.
And that's all we've got from Technorati. Thanks, Technorati! Now... let's check Google.
Source: Google Blog Search
Google Blog Search also found Oliver Thylmann's post, but interestingly, not the ReadBurner blog or that from Bob Stumpel.
Meanwhile, Google did more accurately, and more fully, index other pages, including a piece from JeffIsAGeek called ReadBurner : Aggregating Google Shared Items, explaining ReadBurner's functionality, and the story of how it was "discovered and outed".
Google also found John Battelle's coverage of ReadBurner, where he says, "This looks really cool." He's right, of course.
Meanwhile, keeping with the Web services theme, Jason Kaneshiro of Webomatica finally discovered FriendFeed, and says simply, Interesting: FriendFeed, adding "It may actually prove to be useful." I can promise that it is.
Google isn't done. They also found comments from Bill Wishon on last week's argument of the month, Scoble's deletion from Facebook, and who owns whose data. He writes, in Scoble/Facebook Incident: It’s Not About Data Ownership, "Where did we get this idea that facts about the world must be owned by somebody?"
And lastly, in the Google trumping Technorati theme, we have Steven Hodson's excellent rant against the blindness of A-Listers who spend too much time admiring their stats and not enough time writing. As he notes in Stopping the Lazysphere? … Maybe when Pigs Fly, we're not really looking to the A-List for serious conversation. We're instead going elsewhere. He very flatteringly includes me as one of his "go to" guys for Technology and Apple specifically, and we're honored to be included.
Tonight, and for just about every night in the recent past, I think Technorati has lost. It's unfortunate, and drives me a little bit nuts when I see a smaller, would-be innovative company losing out to a bigger company with seemingly infinite resources. But it looks like this fight is coming to an end.