Simon’s Blog

Technorati, the blog search engine, has just re-invented itself. No longer focussed on blogs, Technorati wants to be a search engine for the so-called “Live Web”; searching not only blogs but also video, music, and photos. It’s a great idea; and one that could be valuable. However, I think Technorati is having problems with execution. What are these problems? Read on…

The Technorati team is clearly dedicated and working hard. After the new release, I pointed out a bug that stopped users seeing the results of their searches (see the comments of Scoble’s blog). Technorati fixed it almost immediately, and rolled out the change within hours. So, as I say, the team’s commitment is not in doubt. The problems with execution I’m talking about, however, aren’t to do with bugs. It’s more fundamental than that.

Algorithms

I have tried a whole bunch of “Live Web” searches on the new Technorati. The truth is - I found it difficult to find any video, music or photo content that was both interesting and timely. In my hands, it pretty much just “doesn’t work”.

User Interface Design

There are a bunch of problems with user interface design on the new Technorati. I’m not going to enumerate them here. I will just point out one significant issue For many, many searches, the main results page will now return no results at all. None. For example, try this search - JavaFX iPhone. The response from the new Technorati is:

There is nothing in the known universe about javaFX iphone.

Strange, because if you click over to the second tab on the user interface, you will see there are actually plenty of results in the Technorati index. That isn’t an isolated example. It happens with many searches.

Conclusion

Above, I’ve pointed out two areas of quality issues for Technorati  - algorithms, and UI design - that I think are pretty important. Sufficiently important that I think these points to genuine business problems for Technorati - problems that may not be easy for them to address. The truth is - if people can’t easily find interesting content from the searches they do, they will go elsewhere. I say all this with regret, because I want to see Technorati succeed… but I think they might be in trouble… I hope I’m wrong.