Bloggers care enough about Technorati to want it to be better at Sparkplug 9 >> bizhack

Bloggers care enough about Technorati to want it to be better

30Sep06

Update: Technorati CEO Dave Sifry has responded in the comments. Thanks!

Technorati board member and venture capitalist Ryan McIntyre is the only upper echelon person associated with Technorati who has even commented on the quality of service that Technorati has NOT been providing lately.

Kudos. But why aren’t we hearing from Dave Sifry about it?

When I saw McIntyre’s post which mentions the issues, I posted the following comment on his blog:

If you’re on the board, are you able to affect the situation at all?

Technorati’s service has always had great PROMISE, but always been greatly “spotty,” as Liz Dunn quaintly referred to it.

First of all: some major effort to solve the problem with the million$ that Technorati has recently raised should be a number one priority. And secondly, some honesty and openness about the situation would be greatly appreciated.

I mean … the arbiter of the blogosphere has what, 2 posts on its blog all of last month - a horrible month, when it’s been up and down like a yo-yo? This is ridiculous: be upfront, be honest, be real.

(This is something that Dave Sifry should take to heart too … as I’ve tried and tried to bring a few issues to his attention via email, links to his blog, and comments on his blog … all without the least sign of success.)

The issue is not only being up or down, or the notorious, infamous “Technorati is experiencing a high volume of searches right now and could not complete your request,” which I’ve seen on the HOME PAGE.

It’s also data integrity as the service appears to wildly swing between mutually inconsistent datasets. Links appear and disappear with disconcerting frequency.

Some kind of information about what the company plans to do about it would be nice. How about telling bloggers the plans for ensuring that it won’t happen again? A little PR wouldn’t be out of place.

As a member of the blogosphere, I suggest that could start on the Technorati blog.

Why am I doing this? Why am I harping on this?

I care about Technorati’s service. I care about what they do. And I keep getting corroborating comments ever so often, weeks and weeks after writing various articles about Technorati’s woes.

Bloggers care about Technorati. Enough to want Technorati to be better.

Tags: technorati, Ryan McIntyre, sifry, john koetsier

Filed under: blogging, mistakes, social media, technorati, web2.0 |

4 Responses to “Bloggers care enough about Technorati to want it to be better”

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1 David Sifry on Sep 30th, 2006 said:

John,

First off, I apologise. You deserve better service, and I am sorry that we let you down.

We’ve been going through a massive colo move this past month - not of our own choice, btw - and we’ve been moving a bunch of our oldest systems to a new location, giving Murphy lots of ways to hit us with bad news.

All of the above isn’t an excuse - you deserve great service from us, and we’ve failed you.

I hope that you’ll notice things working better as we finish working through these issues, and as we fix the remaining issues that caused flakiness.

I hope that we can win back your trust. Thanks for your post.

Dave
2 John Koetsier on Sep 30th, 2006 said:

Thanks Dave.

What I think a lot of bloggers want to know is that you’re aware, you’re listening, and you’ve got a plan to address the situation.

‘Preciate the comment … this is a good start. Being heard is a huge part of feeling like some change for the better is possible.
3 Pi on Sep 30th, 2006 said:

It has been a long process, and one which has caused intense frustration for many people who would normally use and link to Technorati.

Happily it would appear that thgings are beginning to improve. I say ‘beginning’ because entries in the Technorati Blog are not happening; there is no two way communication. Perhaps it should be considered amongst those in charge at Technorati that a few other workers be allowed to make weblog entries - the support and help teams for example.

Problems with links and tags appear to have been ironed out over the last fortnight - I made several points over these problems in my own weblog - but other problems remain. Hopefully the loss of prestige through the last month of so will bring Technorati people back to reality and back to PR work as much as anything else.
4 Kevin on Oct 5th, 2006 said:

Overall I have been happy with Technorati until recently. I have been able to claim posts and when I ping my blogs have see it indexed within one day.
With that said, I have been recently very disappointed. I had my first real problem, and have put in a help request over two weeks ago and several since. No one has officially answered and I have 2 blogs I have not been able to claim. I tried embedded and link posts, the spider cannot automatically find the embedded links. On my safety blog I have just started safety dot more4kids dot info, I even went to w3c and made tweaks to validate my code, plus I have deleted and readded my claim (changing the code on my webpage) several times.
Well thats enough, but I would recommend a way to view help support requests online to see any status or comments. Not hearing anything back has been very frustrating.
Regards,
Kevin