Technorati and The Forced Network Effect
Posted by on Mon, May 08, 2006 @ 04:58 PM
I’m relatively new to the blogosphere now but with the
introduction of my startup blog (OnStartups.com),
I’m beginning to become more interested in some of the underlying
mechanics of creating a high-visibility blog.
So, not too long ago, I registered for Technorati – a “leading”
blog search and ranking service. I figured if startup blog rock-stars
like Guy
Kawasaki are interested in their Technorati ranking, and wants to move to
the “Top 10” in the rankings, there must be some value there. However,
now that I’m in the system, I have yet to see this value. (For the
record, my ranking is hovering at around 17,000 right now for the
OnStartups.com blog).
The Technorati folks have been getting a fair amount of
criticism because of their software being down a lot (sometimes more down than
up), but I’m not going to beat them up over that. I’m going
to assume that those are “technical” issues and that some amount of
money on hardware and/or software tweaking will resolve these (though I will
admit, it’s really frustrating when even the most basic features don’t
work half the time).
In any case, here are my primary issues with Technorati:
- In order to be “part of
the system”, it seems you have to “claim” your blog. I
don’t like this. Though all of the search engines (like
Google) also have ways to submit your site to them, just about all of them
will “find” you as long as someone, somewhere is linking to
you. Why is it necessary for Technorati to require that I claim my
blog to be part of their system?
- The rankings seem to only take
into account the number of inbound links. I think this kind of an
algorithm is overly simplistic, because I think as a community we have
figured out that not all links are created equal. If Guy links to
your site, it has got to be more meaningful than if I do so.
- The rankings and calculations
are not real-time and seem to occur with some randomness (often weeks or
months go by before a site moves up from “0 links from 0 sites”).
I can understand hours and days elapsing before it picks things up
and provides an accurate representation – but months? Seems
too long in this day and age.
So, this is what I would consider a “forced network
effect”. Basically, in order for me to get “credit” for
links that are pointing to me, those sites have to be “claimed” as
well (i.e. registered) on Technorati too. This gives me a subtle “incentive”
to spread the word and get others on Technorati. Normally, I wouldn’t
have an issue with this as it is common when there are “network effects”
in a business, but I fail to see the value in Technorati’s case (other
than vanity and wanting to “push” my own rankings) of there being
more blogs registered. Why not simply crawl the sites out there, and
figure out those with blog RSS feeds and pick them up? Why force a
network effect when there doesn’t really need to be one? (Other
than of course, revenue or profits).
As a novice in the blogosphere, I could simply have this all
wrong – in which case, please leave a comment and set me straight.