Sep 16 2007
Jeremy Schoemaker

Technorati Topics Could Kickass

By Jeremy Schoemaker 28 comments

Last week Technorati introduced Technorati Topics. Its pretty cool scrolling “live” kind of pulse of the blogoshere if you will. Check out the page for technology here. Technorati has kind of gotten a habit of pioneering new cool things but then stopping just a little before they are polished and letting someone else come in and steal there thunder (see google blog search).

So here are some of the things I would do to make Technorati topics kick ass:

1) Give me a slider I can choose the authority threshold of blogs I want to see in the topics. Sometimes I might just want to see very highly authority blogs and sometimes I might only want to see smaller blogs.

2) Set a time threshold in which 1 blog can appear. Topics seems to be over run by super aggressive pingers. At any given time I see double posts or double blogs. Some are just spam but some are good blogs that are just making edits.

3) Make topics work for smaller categories. FOr now I cna only see Entertainment, Technology, Politics, Sports, Business and Live. I would really like to be able to see it for Google, or Adsense, or even Marketing.

4) Show me topics from blogs I favorite ONLY. This would be pretty kickass huh?

Ok thats it.

  1. Word Hugger said on September 16th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

    I saw this a few days ago, looks pretty solid.

    [Reply]

  2. Kanute said on September 16th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    I believe the guys at Technorati have ran out of fuel. they should get new programmers before it’s too late. They are loosing grounds too, according to Alexa. I’ll propose blogs be ranked by their topics and not putting Technology together with Money making blogs.

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  3. ShoeMoney said on September 16th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    I think they just canned a bunch of programmers no?

    [Reply]

  4. Darrell long said on September 16th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

    I also heard they just let a fair amount of programmers go. Signs of bad things to come? I do like the suggestions you had. I think it could be something very solid if they would just put a bit more effort into it.

    [Reply]

  5. Credit Card Offers said on September 16th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    I wish someone with a good chunk of changes takes over Technorati and make it go places. It has so much of potential and as you stated Shoe, they have introducing ideas but not going all the way with them.
    I would be sad to see Technorati dwindle out.

    [Reply]

  6. Gary R. Hess said on September 16th, 2007 at 7:09 pm

    I haven’t seen that yet, pretty cool. #4 would be a great thing to have.

    How about a single list of maybe 3 or 4 showing but loads 20, then you move your mouse up or down and it will add in another and take out one, then loads another into the queue. Kind of wish Blogosphere was like that as well. Would just need a little more ajax…

    [Reply]

  7. Modern Worker said on September 16th, 2007 at 7:53 pm

    Technorati’s home page was CRAP for months, with those week-long links to the same videos all over the above-the-fold intro. I am so glad they switched things up.

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  8. Tracy Robinson said on September 16th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

    I haven’t even looked at Technorati for a while, now you’ve went and given me a reason to.

    [Reply]

  9. ecoBoris said on September 16th, 2007 at 8:55 pm

    Finally some improvements there. I only used it to check how many people mentioned me on their posts and find other similar blogs, but I find blogcatalog is faster for that.

    [Reply]

  10. King Jacob said on September 16th, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    I like “topics” its like digg spy minus the digg bait. Technorati topics would easily replace my reader if they did your suggestions and made it all available in a widget on my desktop.

    [Reply]

  11. Contest Beat said on September 16th, 2007 at 10:56 pm

    Agreed, great analogy

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  12. Chris Jacobson said on September 17th, 2007 at 12:17 am

    If they can replace the programmers they let go with excellent code already in place, I guess there’s only one winner?

    [Reply]

  13. All Seo Services said on September 17th, 2007 at 3:45 am

    4) Show me topics from blogs I favorite ONLY. This would be pretty kickass huh?

    It would be just great if they did introduce that in their system

    [Reply]

  14. Gecko Tales said on September 17th, 2007 at 6:38 am

    Is Technorati mainstream yet? Everyone that reads this blog is probably familiar with it, but how about my mother, or grandmother, or even the teenage kid next door. Search Engine/ Internet types know about it, but is it mainstream yet? I don’t know.

    [Reply]

  15. Daniel Sitter, Idea Seller said on September 17th, 2007 at 9:02 am

    Thanks for the info. It’s a good reason to take another look at the Technorati site. By the way, I saw this post on BlogRush and clicked on it!

    [Reply]

  16. Amit said on September 17th, 2007 at 9:18 am

    It just seems that Technorati is getting right on track again. Really like that cool app!

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  17. Blog Carnivals said on September 17th, 2007 at 10:38 am

    I think it is a great new add, and like you said can be used in numerous ways . I look forward to reading blogs I may have missed else wise, My carnival is allways looking for the hot topics. And this is a great way to find them.

    [Reply]

  18. Derek Gordon said on September 17th, 2007 at 6:18 pm

    Thanks for the great feedback, Shoe. I, too, really like suggestion number 4 and sent a link to your blogpost to everyone here at Technorati (in truth, your other very good suggestions are one’s others have suggested and I know the team has been looking at those very closely). We’re definitely focused on completely polishing topics and making it all it can be — we’re not content with letting others steal our thunder any more! Thanks, again, for thinking of us and offering your support. It’s really appreciated!

    [Reply]

  19. Chris said on September 17th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

    You can mimic this functionality by subscribing to search terms and tags:

    Subscribe to A Search Term:

    Search for a term “Marc Jacobs” for example, change the drop down to “in blog
    posts.”
    You’ll see a list with a filter at the top. Generally I change the authority setting to “some authority” or’a little authority’ to filter out spammy stuff.
    When the page reloads, click on the ’subscribe’ button in the upper right
    corner.

    Subscribe to a Tag:

    Search for a term ‘fashion week’ for example, change the drop down to ‘in tags.’
    Click on the link ‘More blog posts tagged fashion week’
    If the results look good, click on the ’subscribe’ button in the upper right corner.

    [Reply]

  20. Joeychgo said on September 18th, 2007 at 12:50 am

    same here. Thanks for pointing it out jeremy

    [Reply]

  21. Nick Sullivan said on September 18th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

    Technorati are a nice service.

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  22. Stuart Hannig said on September 19th, 2007 at 12:06 am

    Yeah, they do have some fixes needing to be made to the current system.

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  23. Vickywebworld said on October 14th, 2007 at 1:10 am

    Technorati should be aware of topic spammers and copy cats

    [Reply]

  24. Neon said on October 20th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    Didnt know about technorati topic’s cool functionality.
    yeah.. if there are more settings or filter on the scrolling topic page, it will be nice.
    it will be even cooler if it becomes a widget and add it in our site… displaying live scrolling new posts :D

    [Reply]

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