I've got some wonderful news, six month's hard work of our entire team has just gone out the door. http://www.technorati.com/
We just launched a major refresh to www.technorati.com. Some of the changes are subtle, some are big, and they all build on a bunch of improvements we've been making to the site since January. We've been spending a lot of time listening to you, and incorporating an enormous amount of feedback into this refresh - dozens of changes to both our look and feel and to our backend systems to make Technorati more useful to you.
As I've blogged about before, the world has changed. Whereas folks using Technorati a couple of years ago were predominantly coming to us to search the blogosphere to surface the conversations that were most interesting to them, today they are increasingly coming to our site to get the 360 degree context of the Live Web - blogs of course, but also user-generated video, photos, podcasts, music, games and more. They want all the good stuff out there, all in real-time, and we're using the power of 80 million bloggers to help organize it and make it fun to browse; using the wisdom of crowds as a mirror on ourselves. Have a look at the new homepage (Click on the screenshot above to see how it looked when we went live).
This is being facilitated by the phenomenon of tags and tagging, which helps to unify and organize the rapidly expanding world of user-generated media. As more and more publishing tools support the use of tags, the better we are able to assemble collections of social media based on the interests of our users.
The world has changed. This isn't just about blogs anymore. And to be of service to you, we have changed too.
First, we've eliminated search silos on Technorati. In the past, you had to know the difference between keyword search, tag search and blog directory search in order to make use of the full power of our site. No more. Starting today, we now provide you a simplified experience. Simply indicate what's of interest to you and we'll assemble the freshest, hottest, most current social media from across the Live Web - Blogs, posts, photos, videos, podcasts, events, and more.
We've also worked really hard at making our user interface simpler, and more intuitive. We've been spending months doing user testing, and listening to you, our users, collecting and prioritizing what you wanted, what you liked, and what you hated about Technorati. We haven't gotten it 100% right yet, and we're going to keep working hard to improve, but I think we've made a big step forward with this launch.
Some of our power users, for example, didn't want all of the bells and whistles - all the context and multiple media types that you get when you do a search on the new Technorati. You wanted speed. You wanted a clear, clean interface. You wanted to get what you were looking for, get in, and get out fast. We listened to you too. We've streamlined a blogsearch-only homepage at search.technorati.com (an easy shortcut is s.technorati.com - we even eliminated two characters to type to get there!). Have a look. I think you're going to like what you see.
With this launch, we also provide you with more context around more stuff like videos, music, and blogs. Over time, these pages will become richer and more comprehensive as we add more information about the thing itself, like where it was published, who links to it, what other things are similarly tagged, and more.
We're also at work introducing features that help you to see what's happening on the web right now. For instance, you'll see a new ticker on the top of the homepage that indicate what terms and phrases are on the move. We also made improvements to WTF and Favorites that help you understand what's hot - right now - and why.
Finally, there's lots more to do. This is only scratching the surface, and we're going to be rolling out lots more updates and innovations throughout the rest of the year. We're going to continue to work on performance, making things faster and more stable. Every now and then searches still fail for our users or take too long to respond, and that's a top priority for our backend team to fix. We're going to keep listening to you, our users - It is an honor that you give us your time and attention - over 11.7 Million people last month visited Technorati. We've tripled in visitors and traffic in under 5 months. Thanks for telling your friends about us. Thanks for putting your faith in us.
One last thought... I want to thank the small but dedicated team at work here at Technorati. We're just 45 people today (which represents huge growth for us, but is still a pretty small group). We currently track over 250 million videos, blogs, photos, podcasts, events, and other social media objects in addition to more than 80 million blogs, and do our best every day to serve each and every one of you who visit us every day. Even given the enormity of this task, our team continues to invent, improve and innovate in ways that constantly amazes me and reminds me that I'm one of the luckiest guys on the planet. So to our Technorati team: thank you! You folks are the best team I've ever had the privilege to work with. You've been kicking butt to get this out the door. Thanks.
Technorati Tags: blogosphere, blogsearch, gratitude, launch, liveweb, search, searchengine, technorati