In The new Technorati: advertiser-friendly, foreigner-free? Ethan Zuckerman unpacks a bit of what remains (“highly-targeted, advertiser friendly content”) and what’s gone (everything but English) at Technorati. (This blog is still there, at #2659 and falling, with an authority of 549. I was informally advising Technorati when they came up with the authority thing, but I don’t remember what it means, exactly.) I know Ethan also used Technorati’s API to do some very interesting research, but with the API gone, that’s out the window too. And all that’s on top of what I reported on the other day.
While better by far now — relatively — Google Blogsearch (re-branded “Google blogs”) isn’t great. Or not as great as it could be. Or was. The index page, which used to be a Google-esque sea of white space, is now awash in with noise and news. It’s fast, and it’s easy to get an RSS or an Atom feed of any search, which is cool. But it seems to suggest, along with Technorati, that the blogosphere is about current news and trivia.
Blogpulse is still there. I always liked its UI, although the results tended to be old. “Today’s Highlights” are downright stale. It reports “Phillies beat Dodgers in Game 1.” Which was days ago. (MLB.com is up to the second. Phillies ahead at the bottom of the 4th in Game 3.)
BlogScope is one I hadn’t paid much attention to before. Need to dig down a bit. The popularity charting is interesting. Little slow. Owned by the University of Toronto. Interesting.
IceRocket still exists. It also has search for Twitter, Web, MySpace, News, Images and Big Buzz search. All of them are fast. And you can subscribe to RSS feeds of results. Easily. No looking around.
Soooo far… Hey, I’m liking IceRocket. Speedy. Nice UI. Nice slices of times. Trends. Feeds. Nothing fancy, nothing bad, lots good. Go check ’em out.
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