Technorati, Google Trends, and the Hunt to Track Online Influence
Blog search engine Technorati has rolled out a new front page design in an attempt to further align itself as a multi-functional blog and media portal. The new design has cleaned up what was a somewhat chaotic-looking homepage, creating a more eyeball-pleasing experience. It includes a news ticker that runs across the top of the site that runs popular tags.
And as Dave Sifry explains, Technorati wants to leverage its blog search engine to become the premiere place to find “user-generated video, photos, podcasts, music, games and more. They want all the good stuff out there, all in real-time, and we’re using the power of 80 million bloggers to help organize it and make it fun to browse; using the wisdom of crowds as a mirror on ourselves.”
Andy Beal trumpets the changes in declaring that the New Technorati is the Google of Social Media.
Steve Rubel brings up some great broader points about the need to easily be able to find web “influencers” across a broad spectrum of the Internet. Who is influencing the conversation on Facebook, he asks, and what videos are buzzing up buzz on YouTube? It seems that Technorati is attempting to move in the direction of answering those questions, and if it can it may be able to move up the ranks into Google territory.
Speaking of Google, they recently unveiled (what I believe is a revamped) Google Trends, brought to us by Google Labs. Search for American Idol for example and you’ll see a fascinating trend line that shows huge spikes in Google search volume surrounding climactic episodes of the show.
So the hunt to track online influence continues.
