Technorati is generally accepted as the authoritative blog-specific search engine. I recently interviewed its marketing director, Derek Gordon, about the future of Technorati, the emerging microformat standard, government censorship of blogs, and more.

When did it become apparent that a specialized blog engine was necessary?



Three years ago, our CEO, David Sifry, who was among the early bloggers, decided there should be a great way to find and surface blog posts that was (a) timely and (b) somehow authoritative. Up until that time, there was no reliable service along these lines. Thus, he built and deployed Technorati.

How has Technorati effected the way people blog?

Two ways, in particular, I think. First, because Technorati surfaces blog content according to both timeliness and the number of inbound links to the blog / blog post, most bloggers have embraced linking behaviors that only a few stalwarts used in earlier days. Second, Technorati was among a small vanguard to introduce and advance tagging as a way to categorize blog posts and therefore make search results more accurate, relevant and authoritative.

Click below to read the rest of this interview.

How do you see the blog medium evolving over the next year. Over the next five?

Blogging as we understand it today will peak soon and what will emerge next, I think, are multi-media communiques (often called mash-ups) that will allow folks to both produce and aggregate multiple mediums within a single context to convey information, ideas and individual expressions. For instance, some mash-ups we're seeing today include the written word (blog content), Podcasts, digital photos, iMovies and / or digital illustrations (i.e. anime). For us, this will mean expanding our search and indexing capabilities beyond the user-generated content called blogs to include user-generated content across many, if not all, mediums.

What is Technorati's stance on blog censorship?

We hate it. Let the people decide what they will read and what they want.

Recently, Microsoft suspended a blog in China due to content the government deemed objectionable. When searching for information, are citizens who live in countries with repressed free speech rights cut off from information? Or do they just have to know search methods further "underground"?

Luckily, countries like China are the exception rather than the rule, so most content on the World Wide Web is available to all. That having been said, when a country like China actively represses expressions available in blogs, it becomes impossible for Technorati to index and surface that content because it's literally not making its way onto the World Wide Web. Some very enterprising folks find "underground" ways to get around the repression, but the average person very often does not possess the more advanced skills needed to do this successfully, so their expressions are lost to us.

What role do blogs play in consumer purchase habits?

Increasingly, folks are turning to those bloggers who offer up reviews or opinions of products and services as part of a research effort to determine buying decisions. As uniform standards for publishing reviews (an emergent standard called micro-formats will likely take hold this year) are universally adopted it will get easier and easier for Technorati to search specifically for blogger reviews (and anyone else choosing to publish a review via the standard format) by brand / product / service / movie title / etc.

Will Technorati's business model see any changes in the near-future?

We're very excited about (the aforementioned) micro-formats movement and our ability to surface common sorts of content published according to a universal standard. For instance, if everyone used the micro-format for publishing resumes, it will quickly become easy for us for to search for and surface all resumes published to the World Wide Web according to specific search criteria. Same for reviews, calendar listings, even recipes.



Does Technorati plan to expand beyond blog search?

Yes -- we're working now on the emerging micro-formats phenomenon as well as a few other strategic initiatives to allow our users look for and surface content developed by the average person in ways that are both highly informative and entertaining.

Can you elaborate some more about what a micro-format is, and how it differs for a resume vs. a product review?

Sure -- microformats are essentially a standard form that one uses to produce a predictable document. So a micro-format could be assigned to virtually anything that people generally produce to convey information: resumes, reviews, business cards, recipes, calendar listings -- and the list could go on. I can commend this site to you: http://www.microformats.org/. It does a much better job than I just did providing insight to micro-formats and their applications. I hope this helpful!

What new features can Technorati users look forward to? Perhaps an automatic language translator to convert text into your native dialect?

We're not looking to do language conversion at this moment, although we plan to make it easier for folks to search for and surface content published in their language of choice.


I'd like to thank Derek Gordon for the interview. I look forward to seeing the promising new Technorati features he mentioned - microformat standards should have wide-ranging uses.