And I have to say, despite my gripes with Technorati (which probably reached their height when the site turned into a political one, with all the Live8 promotion that assumed we all share a warm fuzzy feeling about the Make Poverty History campaign), I think they’re doing an excellent job of being transparent and open about what the problems are and how they’re working on them. For anyone who’s ever worked in IT - and I have - you know how annoying it is to have users all over your back when you’re busting your backside to fix things. Maintaining a polite and friendly honesty about what you’re doing to improve things isn’t easy, and it’s refreshing to see.

Is Technorati flaky? Yes. Is it pretty clear why that is? I think so. Are they working hard to change that? I think so. Are they talking to their users in an open way about all this? Seems like it to me. No matter how much the outages and problems irritate me, I’m hard pressed to rake them over the coals for not being flawless.

i think the point’s the same, essentially: that it’s not doing what it’s meant to. Personally my problem - and, I’d imagine, most people’s problem - isn’t my blog interacting with Technorati, it’s being able to search the thing in the first place. (though the point about bloggers giving it a tough time because it was ignoring them is relevant too).

I do appreciate the honesty Dave saying “yep, it’s not up to scratch”, though.

Sorry that things haven’t been meeting your expectations. We’re working on fixing these core issues first, even as we deal with continued growth in the service, dealing with spam and fake blogs, and just the general growth of the blogosphere.

Thanks again for your honest feedback.

Dave

And while I’m not saying you’re not working hard - certainly, on my last visit to see you guys, there was plenty of industry - I think there’s a widespread perception that the core service is being forgotten in favour of attention-grabbing add-ons. That’s got to be rooted somewhere in real user experience, hasn’t it?

My apologies if you are having problems, and do email me at kmarks@technorati.com if your blog is not being indexed as you’d like it to be.

Pioneering services are important, and deserve the respect that making big changes brings them (Alta Vista, Blogger, et al)… but ultimately, if they don’t do their job properly, they struggle.

I like Dave Sifry, but there’s little doubt that they’ve forgotten the golden rule of any company: before you think about anything else, do the thing you do *well*.

I don’t think Technorati ever got a uniformly easy ride. Show me any website visited by more than fifty people on a daily basis - whether it offers supposed tools or not - and I’ll show you a website that someone has felt particular pride in criticising. But in June, when I noticed that Technorati just was not picking up my posts, tag as I might, I wondered why they weren’t getting more negative press. Suddenly, all I seemed to encounter was negative press on Technorati.

I’m glad that Technorati got released, flaws and all, though. Aren’t we all better off for the competition going on to better it?