Did David Sifry Pop the Web 2.0 Bubble?
There’s barrelfuls of chatter to spare today stemming from the announcement that David Sifry is stepping down as CEO of Technorati, and that the blog search engine/portal is laying off eight employees. That, coupled with news that PodTech CEO John Furrier is stepping down is causing speculation about where the web 2.0 cycle is at – pre-pop, popping, or pop-as-overhyped. Jason Calacanis does a good job of framing the last three “down-and-up” cycles, 2005-2007 being a largely up-up-and-away period.
Mike Arrington’s characterization of Sifry’s goodbye message is pretty hilarious:
me….me…me…and oh yeah we layed off eight people.
Sifry also refers to himself as a “great leader” in the fourth paragraph of his post.
Mathew Ingram concurs, writing that “he certainly seems to have gotten the hang of the cold-blooded CEO dismissal message.”
What I’m hoping is that the Internet economy will see a soft landing over the next year, with an inevitable shakeout in oversaturated spaces, and with continued growth in companies that provide value for people. A lot may ride on the overall health of the advertising industry, although as we’re seeing, the trend in ad spending is moving rapidly away from traditional media and toward the online world.
David Dalka looks at a potentially post-Technorati landscape and runs down other blog search engines, such as Ask, Google, and Icerocket. My personal take is that there is yet to be the “Google” of the blog search market (and that includes Google blog search!). Technorati is actually just about the best at present, and I like the introduction of its “authority” system, though how it works is somewhat mysterious to me.
BlogStorm and a bunch of others point out that Technorati’s troubles have accelerated as Google has been eating away at its traffic. Mark Evans makes the interesting counter-argument that while Technorati’s traffic and revenue growth has been “solid… it’s simply not sexy to potential suitors.”
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August 17th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
[…] Eric Berlin wonders if Technorati is a canary in the coal mine. […]
August 17th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
No great loss. Technorati’s technology has been suffering lately (lagging in catching posts and failing to catch all links to a site, which pretty much shot their “relevance” algorithm) and its utility is being eclipsed by mainstream search engines (how exactly is a blog different from any dynamic site that can be crawled by a robot and measured by linkback popularity?)
Natural selection will out.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I never did quite grasp technorati. Guess it’s no loss to me - even though I’m part of it.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Eric,
I wouldn’t read too much Web 2.0 into whatever issues Technorati is facing. As a local aggregator who has who has relied heavily on Technorati for discovering new blogs, I’ll make a few observations:
- Technorati was — by far — the most comprehensive search engine. But Google’s blog search engine has really improved, and while I don’t feel it’s still as comprehensive as Technorati, it’s pretty darn close.
– Technorati’s “authority” index bugs the heck out of people. If 50 people link to your blog, technorati’s “authority” may show less than that amount because it tends to place its weight on linking over the last six months. This system favors the big sites that produce posts that are often cited by other bloggers. For the typical toil-in-the-weeds local blogger who develops his/her own list of regular linked readers, the technorati measure is not a measure of their “authority.” Moreover, the use of the word “authority” speaks of institutional aggrogance. It’s very, very insulting because it implies that a mathematical metric can determine the “authority” of the blogger — and that is absolutely false. They are taking their theory of measurement, applying it, calling it “authority” and if you don’t like, tough. Smart move. I’ve tuned it out as a reference. They can fix this easy by offering a series of metrics that meet all the blog models.
3. Technorati should be doing more to improve its ability to search local and niche blogs. Technorati owned this space and now its let Google catch up.
4. Confusing interface. What is Technocrati trying to be? A portal or search engine? I can’t tell anymore.
August 20th, 2007 at 1:10 am
Sprague — Not sure if Technorati is dead and buried just yet, but I agree they have their work cut out for them in terms of providing a unique search experience. Personally, I find value in their blog rankings — not sure how much of a business lies therein, however. I also think that there’s no clear blog search leader, which leaves the space fairly wide open. I wouldn’t put it past google to lock it down one of these years, however!
August 20th, 2007 at 1:17 am
Alessandro - A lot of bloggers use it as a way to see who is linking to them/talking about them, and others use it as a blog search engine. There’s no end to tapping into blogger’s self-interest, it seems!
Kob - Very interesting thoughts. Yeah, I hear you regarding “authority” — perhaps some sort of “sub-authority” is in order to meet the issue I believe you’re talking about, which is relative influence/authority within a field or sub-field. So while techcrunch may have a lot of authority overall, ProBlogger likely deserves more “sub-authority” in its specific area of expertise.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:53 am
[…] Blog search engine and aspiring social media portal Technorati has had some well publicized troubles of late, including the resignation of CEO David Sifry and a round of layoffs. […]