ME and Ophelia

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TECHNORATI INVITES FEEDBACK
The world is its oyster

David Sifry, CEO at Technorati, invites users to send feedback to his team at feedback@technorati.com, or send comments, thoughts and suggestions directly to him david-blog@sifry.com - anytime.

Can't imagine the blogosphere without Technorati and wonder how bloggers got on without it. Must have felt awfully lonesome in those days. I hope it continues to develop all sorts of interesting new things. Seems to me the world is its oyster. Technorati sure could do some neat things - better than any Friendster, Orkut or LinkedIn type sites.

I'm wondering if we'll ever be able to search Technorati for blogs by gender, age, location, marital status - and other things like interests, hobbies, education, occupation etc. I guess it's feasible if Technorati introduced voluntary registration with details for each blogger to complete.

The Ageless Project has a neat little search facility where one can search for bloggers by their year/month/date of birth. It's an interesting way to narrow down finding new blogs - instead of looking at lists of thousands of blog names or lists of pecking orders. But Ageless Project does not have as many blogs registered as Technorati, which is now watching over two million weblogs.
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BLOGGERS LOVE TECHNORATI
14,000 new weblogs within 48 hours

Last week, I noticed Technorati's stats. Wanted to blog congrats when they tracked the two millionth weblog. But they reached the milestone so quickly, in a matter of hours, that I missed it. A few days ago, I copied and pasted their stats. Wish I'd noted the exact time and dates between these two sets of figures:

A few days ago at Technorati:
2,002,275 weblogs watched.
263,614,537 links tracked.

Today at Technorati:
2,016,320 weblogs watched.
265,149,295 links tracked.

Within the space of what seemed like 48 hours, Technorati tracked 14,000 new weblogs. Not sure if the stats include weblogs that are not registered with Technorati. Or whether it means they are getting 14,000 new registrations within a few days. Whatever, here's wishing Technorati a long and happy prosperous life.
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SEARCHING THE WORLD LIVE WEB
Technorati Community and 2Entwine Gush

Often I think about the neat things Technorati could do. And Gush. Don't know why. I liked the user interface of Gush. Computer problems hindered me from checking out Gush in-depth. Must remember to see how Gush works on my new Mac.

Each morning, after checking email, my first port of call is Technorati and the list of blogs linking to mine. I use it as my own little aggregator to click into and catch up on each blog.

At the moment I have a 12" screen and find the aggregator I tried at Blogmatrix only covered one third of my screen. It wasn't easy to read blogs. Had to squint on those with very small print. With Technorati, I simply page flick and catch up on many blogs quickly - and click into who is linking to those blogs, and read those blogs too.

Using Technorati, it'd be great to find blogs around my location - and search on surrounding counties - by age, gender, marital status - and other countries Also, it'd be neat to keep Technorati's page open as a side pane on my computer screen. Or pop it open - like Outlook Express email - to see what's new relating to my blog and the blogs that link to me. And get some sort of alert when a blog links to mine, or when bloggers publish new posts to their blog.

Wish that blogs linking to mine, would not regularly disappear from my list at Technorati. Happily, they reappear - every week or so. Can't work out why it happens with some, but not with others. Probably something to do with how blogrolls work.

Also, I prefer to use Technorati instead of an aggregator because it "feels" more personal and friendly. And leaves a footprint of my visit in each of the blogs referrer stats - most tend to do a return visit on the same day. Reading blogs through an aggregator may not leave a clear indication that I've visited a persons blog.

People talk of Technorati being an ego thing about links. But the connectivity of the blogosphere - and what makes it so friendly and unique - is the linking. A link communicates many things. I use it to ping notes to other other bloggers at the bottom of posts. I ping links to cheer someone, say hi or whatever. Best of all, it is so simple to use - and free for anyone and everyone. It's not divisive. Technorati have the makings of a fabulous social networking and community that I, for one, will not mind subscribing to and paying extra for via PayPal.

I've donated to HaloScan for my comments and trackbacks facility. When I get my new mac set up, I'll subscribe to Technorati as a token of appreciation.