technorati

Twitter and blogs: Post once and bail out

For all of its glory, Twitter is apparently not as sticky as many social media buffs would like it to be. A recent Harvard Business School study reported that 10 percent of the service's users account for more than 90 percent of tweets. (I wrote about Twitter's lack of loyalty back in April.)

However, I don't think it really matters. As with any service or piece of software, a rising tide lifts all boats, so a core user base can propel a service for quite a while. Somewhere down the line however, Twitter as a company will need to put programs and efforts into place to encourage people to actually use the service if it ever plans to monetize it.

The fact that 10 percent of users are driving 90 percent of the content is not dramatically different than what you see with sites like Wikipedia, or with personal blogs, which have an even lower rate of consistent publishing. According to a 2008 study by Technorati, 95 percent of the blogs they track hadn't been updated in at least four months.

Orphaned tweets, like orphaned blogs, are just as much part of the social fabric as anything else. The fact is that people abandon stuff all the time--TV shows, books, whatever. We shouldn't be remotely shocked that someone bails out of blogging or something else that could be considered work. … Read more

Technorati trims workforce, cuts pay

Blog search company Technorati announced Tuesday that it has laid off six employees and will cut salaries by 10 percent to 15 percent for the rest of its workforce, which after the layoffs, now number 45.

Responding to what he believes is a worsening economic climate, Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra said in a blog post that deciding to lay off employees was difficult because of the "high performers who have worked long hours to get us where we are now. They're also friends, and we're very sad to see them go." He claims that Technorati needed … Read more

Technorati makes another acquisition, launches ad platform

Things haven't been so hot over at blog search company Technorati ever since Google debuted its Google Blog Search tool. But the company has kept going, and on Wednesday announced that it has launched its ad platform in an alpha test, after acquiring start-up AdEngage to power it.

In June, Technorati launched "Technorati Media," an ad network that now has about 45 participating Web sites. With AdEngage, which uses the now-common "self-service" model, advertisers can buy ads in the Technorati Media network directly. The new network, the company says, will be called Technorati Engage.

"… Read more

Confirmed: The blogosphere is mainstream

With nearly 1,000,000 posts a day, the blogosphere is overflowing with content and now fully established as a mainstream rather than fringe phenomenon. Traditional media have adopted blogs as a complementary form of content to the traditional news and feature stories. According to Techhnorati's latest report on the state of the blogosphere, many bloggers are making money. Technorati surveyed a sample of about 1,000 bloggers and found that the mean annual revenue for advertising is $6,000, but sites with 100,000 or more unique visitors are generating more than $75,000 in revenue.

None of … Read more

Technorati acquires 'online magazine' Blogcritics

Technorati Media, parent company of blog search site Technorati, has acquired Blogcritics.org. The newly purchased site is a user-fueled "online magazine" for bloggers that was already a member of the newish Technorati Media ad network.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Technorati has said that it plans to keep Blogcritics an intact, separate property.

With the acquisition, Technorati says it hopes to help Blogcritics contributors make some money, as well as scale the property to give it more reach. "As part of Technorati Media, we'll be able to grow the community and … Read more

Can an ad network save Technorati?

Blog aggregation start-up Technorati will be launching an ad network later on Tuesday called "Technorati Media," TechCrunch reported. This marks a new direction for the company, which has heretofore focused on blog search and directories.

As TechCrunch commenters note, this is not exactly revolutionary. Ad networks are everywhere. What makes Technorati Media different from a Glam Media or Federated Media is apparently the fact that it'll advertise on "the little guys" as well as high-traffic blogs, promising a better deal than Google's ubiquitous AdSense (it's similar to what Six Apart is doing).

There … Read more

Technorati tries to organize the blogosphere

Technorati has announced a new feature called Topics. Topics is basically a "river of news" from selected blogs in Technorati's six major categories: Entertainment, Technology, Politics, Sports, Business and Life. The stories from these blogs scroll down the page as they are written. According to Technorati, the blogs that are included are picked based on a variety of factors, including, "Technorati Authority, frequency of posting, use of relevant tags, links to related subject matter and general topicality."

Other sites that also work to aggregate the hottest stories on the Internet include Gabe Rivera's Techmeme … Read more

What's all this social news stuff, anyhow?

I've been reading blogs since before the term "blog" came into popular use. Pioneers of the format such as Jerry Pournelle (jerrypournelle.com) and Robert Bruce Thompson (ttgnet.com) just called their sites "day books" or "journals," terms carried over from the world of paper and pen.

As a reader, all I really cared about was… Read more

Technorati CEO Dave Sifry steps down

Dave Sifry, founder and CEO of blog search company Technorati, has stepped down from his post according to an entry on the company blog. The resignation is effective immediately; he will remain chairman of Technorati's board. Meanwhile, CFO Teresa Malo, vice president of engineering Dorion Carroll and vice president of marketing Derek Gordon will jointly run the company while seeking a new chief executive.

"Making tough choices is a daily reality," Sifry wrote. "But some choices are tougher than others, particularly when they involve one's own self." Technorati, an early entry in the blog … Read more