Richard

I have to ask, but how many people would ever actually use Google Blog Search over Google's normal search? Even I don't usually bother with it. I'm guessing just the early adopter set and a small percentage of normal people who click the 'more' link on Google's homepage would. So I actually don't think Techmeme is much under threat by this. Also, why do people (and especially Marshall ;-) keep ragging on Technorati? It's great at what it does, index blogs. I use it far more than Google Blog Search. - Richard via FriendFeed MT Plugin

If I want to search blogs specifically, I'd always use Blog Search. Similarly, News Search for news, Image Search for images. The links are pretty prominent on every search page, surely more people than techie early adopters have explored them? As for Technorati, I think it's their metrics for measuring relative importance that annoy people, rather than the indexing service. - Neil Saunders

Agree with Neil and do the same things but Technorati seems pointless, it's always borked - Sally Church

I really like the blog search on Google. Sometimes I specifically want it. - JillMissesSnuggling

Neil: "The links are pretty prominent on every search page, surely more people than techie early adopters have explored them?" I dunno, the link on google main page is one of the ones in the 'more' drop down list. Admittedly even that would get more links than most of us could dream of, being on google.com. But still I don't think it's something most people think to use when searching. - Richard via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I've been using Google Blog Search for ages. I like the granularity options (last week, 12 months, etc) - Deepak

This could prove to be relevant for any niche who does not have a good working memetracker like we do have with Techmeme. The reason why I am looking forward to Googles approach? They are one of the few services in the world to get internationalization right. I am sorry, but I could care less about the daily blantering of US Politics and if I had a snooze button on every time somebody on a tech blog goes politics I'd be happy to use it. Techmeme has 'my' niche, so it will stay my first choice because it provides somethings others dont - a big fast visual clue. For the rest of the topics - most of them will never be done in a Techmeme way - it will be good news until the spammers get into it even more. Some checks shows that spammers are highly in it already and I assume google takes this as a natural approach to Websites / News and now blogs. - Nicole Simon via FriendFeed MT Plugin

This sounds like a good thing with Open Access day coming - how many hundred blog posts will it take to get to the top? - Cameron Neylon

Felix, I guess Tim Berners-Lee has yet to be convinced by Clay Shirky's argument. Aldo, thanks for the info, good to know. - Richard via FriendFeed MT Plugin

@Felix >the Semantic-Web-with-capital-letters is a (poor) solution in search of a problem You might be right there... Data integration is not a problem. It is just a crazy idea that costs billions to the enterprise, and probably the oldest recurrent theme in IT. > anyone can understand, Yeah, we should learn a lesson or two from EJBs or Web Services about simplicity. Heh. But I do give you a point there. The learning curve is a bit steep. But maybe for a good reason. Just wait 400 days. - Aldo Bucchi via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I've written about this a lot on my blog--I really believe that the semantic/linked data Web will take off when there are compelling consumer applications out there that offer up their data as linkable RDF. Once that's out there people will start to be able to link their own data out to the rest of the Web. Right now it's almost an academic exercise because the linkable data that's available isn't personal. Applications which offer their data as RDF will start to be seen once applications start being built on RDF. Applications will start being built on RDF when developers realize the tremendous value of building on RDF. For developers, here's the golden egg RDF lays: it frees you from the constraints of relational schemas. When you change and evolve your app, you no longer have to revise your schema, you simply add to it. That's an extremely simple explanation, but if you're a developer you realize just how powerful it is. My suspicion is that the first RDF-based applications that see wide adoption - Jason Kolb via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Technorati's site is down. Looks like *some* things don't change over time. - Sprague D

I assume that they didn't count Microblogging / Twitter? It is a lot easier to Twitter every day than to write a thought-provoking blog post. Checking blog posts every morning has replaced the morning paper for many of us already! The number of quality blogs has gone up and have worked there way into my daily routine, and that is a great thing. - Frank Sinton via FriendFeed MT Plugin

This is a great quantitative analysis. However, I think it's getting more "mainstreamed" than "niched". Case in the point: We were at Blog World Expo the other day and I was delighted to see couple of old (I mean really old!) media representatives stopping by and scouting technologies they can use on their in-the-works-social site. Works! Indus - Indus Khaitan via FriendFeed MT Plugin

@Dalka, you say: "why should we believe (and make serious decisions off of) these numbers? I don't think you've earned that trust." I think Technorati has more than earned our trust to deliver these kind of statistics. It's been measuring the blogosphere right from the start, no other analytics company can say that. @Richard Jalichandra (CEO - Technorati), you say: "Blogs are media, not a fringe web 2.0 fad." I couldn't agree more! :-) I do think it's important to make a distinction between writing blogs, which Marshall argues is on the decline, and reading them, which most agree is going mainstream. Marshall himself wrote that: "Reading blogs is becoming increasingly mainstream and the line between a blog and another kind of website is growing increasingly blurred." Looking forward to the next instalment of the Technorati data... - Richard via FriendFeed MT Plugin