In many ways, Wednesday's release of an updated front page to Google Blog Search has put blog news tracking into the limelight. Google didn't get there first though. Sites like Techmeme, Blogrunner, and Technorati have been tracking the hottest blog posts for quite some time. Now's a good point to take a look at what makes these sites (and others) individual and different from Google's new tool.
Editor's note: this list is in no particular order.
Google Blog Search's new homepage is simple, but not that smart about melting down information into a small amount of space.
(Credit: CNET Networks)In case you missed Wednesday's news, Google's new blog search tool organizes the biggest news and the sites that are breaking it. The service is entirely automated, and meant to be a quick way to figure out what's going on outside of mainstream media outlets--the sources that make their way onto Google's sister site, Google News.
Google Blog Search's core feature is that it shows you not only how many different blogs have written about a particular topic, but also within what period of time. It also blends in some of Google's trends prowess to show you how a story's prominence has increased or decreased by the hour.
2. Techmeme
To compare, let's start with Techmeme. Techmeme is a site run by Gabe Rivera, who has formulated a software-powered algorithm that automatically figures out which stories are hot and orders them accordingly. Items change throughout the day, with as much importance placed on who wrote the story and where it came from as the topic itself.
One of the things that makes Techmeme stand out from the rest is its speed. The service is constantly crawling thousands of news sources, and it promotes and demotes items depending on the day's story velocity. It's also updating its list of sources on a daily basis, so new sites that offer good coverage can rise in the ranks at a good clip.
Techmeme's story filter does its best to figure out whose story is getting the most play and linkage from around the Web.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Compared with Techmeme, the sources in Google Blog Search are weighted a bit differently. Google's taken it's "all of the Web!" approach here, which means you're going to see a lot of junk blogs that are likely taking content from elsewhere. As automated as Techmeme is, there's still some behind-the-scenes selection going on (via the software) that keeps those copycat blogs out of the mix. The same cannot be said for Google's current offerings, although that is likely to change.
One of the criticisms of Techmeme has been its recognition of who "broke" a story. The service's policy is to give an author a primary headline (instead of a relational link based on how many other blogs are linking to that post), combined with when it surfaced. The system is not perfect though--in cases where several publications release a post that's been embargoed things get fuzzy.
Also worth noting is that Techmeme is just one of four companion sites that use this same system for different topics. There's also celebrity gossip tracker WeSmirch; Memeorandum, which focuses on political news; and baseball news tracker Ballbug.
This story continues after the break. Keep reading for numbers 3-7, and which one you should use to track news.
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Early Wednesday, Google updated its blog search tool to track news stories as they pop up on various blogs. Like Google News, the company is taking a product that began as something for search and making it a destination of its own.
What's different in blog search compared with news is that the front page shows how many outlets wrote about a story and how old in a very different manner. In blog search's case the number of sources is given a far higher prominence, and instead of tracking how fresh a story is, Google has chosen to display how long it's had the limelight.
Competing services like Techmeme, Blogrunner, and Tailrank (currently down) have offered a similar bird's eye view of the news, however, none of those have had the benefit of being tied into a company that maintains such a large search index and proprietary crawling system. While Google Blog search will largely remain a place for people to search for subjects as they appear on blogs, this new system will make it far easier to pick up on how newsy an item is when searching for it.
In addition to this basic clustering page, when users dig in deeper to see all the coverage they can now see by time how a story has been picked up. Each meme is tracked in 16-hour stints, with a chart to match. The stories will also be reordered as they gain prominence or interest--a system that Google has not disclosed the inner workings of.
For now the new blog search home page is limited to English, although a post on the Official Google Blog says other languages will be pushed out in the next few months.
The new Google Blog search home page tracks news by popularity.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
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 further improve our platform to attract new audiences," Blogcritics founder Eric Olsen said in a release. "Technorati's mission to help bloggers and people who read blogs is the ideal complement for us."
Acquiring content properties, however, likely won't change the fact that Technorati has been losing ground to Mountain View, Calif.-powered Google Blog Search and (to an extent) the search feature that Twitter built into its technology when it bought Summize. Technorati founder David Sifry has long since left the company, and he's now at the helm of a new start-up called Offbeat Guides.
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 is also a top-notch lineup of advertisers already on board, which reportedly include Twentieth Century Fox Film, Acura, Adobe Systems, Best Buy, Chevrolet, Honda Motor, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Nike, Paramount Pictures, SanDisk, Scion, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Toyota Motor, T-Mobile, Universal Pictures, Verizon, and Visa.
But bloggers have reason to be skeptical, and not just because there are so many ad networks already: Technorati just hasn't been doing a first-rate job in the performance department recently.
Compete.com shows an overall traffic decline since last year, with the exception of a major spike in November that has since subsided. CEO David Sifry stepped down in August, in a move accompanied by several layoffs.
The blog search niche has, meanwhile, been crowded with Google Blog Search--and for zeitgeist measurement tools, there are plenty of Twitter applications that are far more up-to-the-moment.
Some TechCrunch commenters welcomed an alternative to AdSense that would bring in better revenues for smaller publishers. But others brought up Technorati's system outage issues--which admittedly aren't as prolific as, say, Twitter's--and raised concerns about joining a new ad network coming from a company that some have seen as mismanaged.
One directed a comment to Technorati's management and said, "Please fix RSS feeds on search queries first, before you do anything else. They stopped working weeks ago." Another posed the question, "If they've been unable to keep the system functioning and can't track my posts, what makes you think they'll be able to track and pay out ad revenue?"
The commenter continued, "I'll stick with AdSense: I get a nice check every month!"
Technorati clearly needed to change direction in the wake of Google Blog Search, but launching an ad network might just be too little, too late.
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 search market, has recently been plagued by technical difficulties, revenue headaches and competition from Google Blog Search. Sifry's resignation, as he notes, was not unexpected: "For those of you who follow Technorati regularly, you know that we've been conducting a CEO search since Spring and that it was just a matter of time before I made a transition," he explained. "Rather than waiting for the process to play out, I would go ahead and transition to the board exclusively, taking on the role of Chairman of the Board."
Sifry also announced that eight members of Technorati's staff have been laid off in a move to "adjust our expense structure to be more appropriately aligned with our priorities moving forward."
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