The new Technorati

I've always found Technorati interesting and useful ... and for as long as I've been using it, I've known people who didn't think it was either. Now here's the Totally New Technorati, and most of the feedback I'm seeing on it is negative.

Personally, I'm taking a cautiously optimistic wait-and-see attitude on the new format. I've generally used Technorati for three things:

- To see "what everyone's talking about." That's Technorati's bread and butter. I'm not sure what they've changed in the way of relevance algorithms and whatnot, but they still seem to have that kind of content well in hand.

- To promote my own content. The "ping" feature for notifying Technorati that I have new material up seems to be missing at the moment, but that doesn't mean it will stay missing. Rolling out a complete site remodel takes awhile.

- To see who's linking to / discussing KN@PPSTER, and how it "ranks" versus other blogs of its type. Their revised "authority" system seems to have at least temporarily advantaged KN@PPSTER -- my "authority" tracks more closely with some more popular blogs I monitor than it did before the change -- but I suspect that there will be a shakedown period over which that changes. The one concern I have is that, for the moment at least, I'm not seeing specific "reaction" data, i.e. a list of blogs linking/responding to KN@PPSTER. I really hope that comes back.

I thought the "old" Technorati was great. Give the "new" Technorati a month to work the kinks out and I expect it will be even better.