Technorati was a search engine and a publisher advertising platform that served as an advertising solution for the thousands of websites in its network. Technorati launched its ad network in 2008, and at one time was one of the largest ad networks reaching more than 100 million unique visitors per month. The name Technorati was a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordstechnology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

and literati, which evokes the notion of technological intelligence or intellectualism. In 2016,

Synacor 'Synacor Inc.'' is a technology and services company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. It provides email and collaboration tools througZimbra and TV Everywhere authentication and identity management services througCloud ID In addition to Buff ...

acquired Technorati for $3 million. The company's core product was previously an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

for searching

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s. The website stopped indexing blogs and assigning authority scores in May 2014 with the launch of its new website, which is focused on online publishing and advertising.Welcome to the new Technorati
/ref> Technorati was founded by

Dave Sifry Dave Sifry is an American software entrepreneur and blogosphere icon known for founding Technorati in 2004, formerly a leading blog search engine. He also lectures widely on wireless technology and policy, weblogs, and open source software. Ear ...

, with its

headquarters Headquarters (commonly referred to as HQ) denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the to ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Kevin Marks Kevin Marks is on the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group, a UK-based Digital Rights campaigning organization and is an Open Web Advocate. He is one of the founders of Microformats. Marks was listed at #13 in ''The Daily Telegraph'' 5 ...

was the site's Principal Engineer.

Tantek Çelik Tantek Çelik is a Turkish-American computer scientist, currently the Web standards lead at Mozilla Corporation. Çelik was previously the chief technologist at Technorati. He worked on microformats and is one of the principal editors of sever ...

was the site's Chief Technologist. The site won the

SXSW South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...

2006 awards for Best Technical Achievement and Best of Show. It was nominated for a 2006

Webby Award The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include ...

for Best Practices, but lost to

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...

and

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

Technology

Technorati used real-time market insights to optimize digital advertising interactions across its publisher network with the use of technology designed to help publishers get discovered by advertisers and earn more for their content.

Reception

In February 2006, Debi Jones pointed out that Technorati's "State of the

Blogosphere The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...

" postings, which then claimed to track 27.7 million blogs, did not take into account MySpace blogs, of which she said that there were 56 million. As a result, she said that the utility of Technorati as a gauge of blog popularity was questionable. However, by March 2006, Aaron Brazell pointed out that Technorati had started tracking MySpace blogs. In May 2006, Technorati teamed up with the PR agency

Edelman Edelman is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Abram Wolf Edelman (a.k.a. Abraham Edelman; 1832–1907), Polish-born American rabbi; the first rabbi in Los Angeles, California * Adam Edelman (born 1991), American-born four-time Is ...

. The deal earned a lot of criticism, both on principle and as a result of Edelman's 2006

fake blog A fake blog (sometimes shortened to flog or referred to as a flack blog) is an electronic communication in the blog format that appears to originate from a credible, non-biased and independent source, but which in fact is created by a company or o ...

scandals. Edelman and Technorati officially ended the deal in December 2006. That month, Oliver Reichenstein pointed out that the so-called "State of the Blogosphere" was more of a PR-tool and money maker for Edelman and Technorati than a reliable source, explaining in particular: a) why Technorati/Edelman's claim that "31% of the blogs are written in Japanese" was "bogus", and b) where the financial profit for the involved parties was in this. In May 2007,

Andrew Orlowski Andrew Orlowski (born 1966) is a British columnist, investigative journalist and former executive editor of the IT news and opinion website ''The Register''. In 2021, Orlowski became a business columnist for ''The Daily Telegraph''. Journalism ...

, writing for the

tech tabloid A Tech tabloid is a type of news media that mainly concentrates on technology news: science, IT, semiconductors, telecoms and related issues, but also takes on a less formal and more humorous approach than traditional technology publications such ...

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information tec ...

'', criticized Technorati's May 2007 redesign. He suggested that Technorati had decided to focus more on returning image thumbnails rather than blog results. He also claimed that Technorati never quite worked correctly in the past and that the alleged refocus was "a tacit admission that it's given up on its original mission". In August 2008, Technorati acquired the online magazine,

Blogcritics Blogcritics is a blog network and online magazine of news and opinion. The site was founded in 2002 by Eric Olsen and Phillip Winn. Blogcritics features more than 100 original articles every week, and maintains an archive of all its published con ...

, for an undisclosed sum of money. As a result, Blogcritic's founders – publisher Eric Olsen and technical director

Phillip Winn Blogcritics is a blog network and online magazine of news and opinion. The site was founded in 2002 by Eric Olsen (writer), Eric Olsen and Phillip Winn. Blogcritics features more than 100 original articles every week, and maintains an archive of a ...

– became full-time Technorati employees. One of the first collaborative ventures of the two entities was for Blogcritics writers to begin writing descriptions of Technorati tags. In October 2008, Technorati acquired the online ad agency Adengage. Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra wanted to use the AdEngage platform to expand Technorati Media's offering, starting with an expansion of their advertising business from higher traffic sites. The AdEngage network added a reported 12 billion monthly impression growth to the Technorati Media Network. In April 2009, Blogcritics underwent a complete site redesign and switched

content management systems A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

. In 2009, Technorati decided to stop indexing blogs and sites in languages other than English in order to focus only on the English-language

blogosphere The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...

. As a result, thousands of sites in various languages were no longer rated by the Technorati service. In 2014, Technorati stopped indexing blogs altogether, refocusing its efforts on its advertising business. In 2016,

acquired Technorati for $3 million.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Technorati Home Page

Technorati management team
official page, reference for much of the above
Giga OM's entry on the end of the Technorati-Edelman deal

Technorati's 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report
Blog search engines Online advertising Social bookmarking websites Folksonomy Defunct websites Discontinued web annotation systems Defunct social networking services News aggregators Web 2.0

Technology

Reception

See also

References

External links