Thing #14: Technorati

I am sorry to say that I was not at all impressed with Technorati. After watching the video clip and listening to the management team and developers of Technorati speak about their vision, I was very interested and willing to dig in and get started. I especially enjoyed listening to Liz Dunn, Product Manager for Technorati, speak on how information is shared between real people instead of paid critics and writers. She shared her real life experience on reading blogs to find a consumer of a particular band's concert venue. She wanted to make sure that the concert would be worth the money of a ticket. Music critics will not necessarily lead you in the right direction, but real life consumers can give you first hand knowledge. So, needless to say after reading and listening to information shared regarding Technorati, I was excited about the possibilities. Then I tried it for myself and was disappointed with what I found.
First of all, I could not complete the activity because the popular blog searches and tags page was unavailable. I then began to search for the keywords "School Library Learning 2.0" using Blog posts, Blog directory, and Tags and found nothing. I also tried the Technorati widgets and it was also unavailable. So, though in theory the idea of being able to search for bloggers all in one site sounds great, I think I will stick with my tried and true Google Reader. I have enjoyed organizing my Google Reader with all my favorite blogs and love the idea of deleting and adding to this group whenever I like.
While learning about de.licio.us and Flickr and Diigo and other similar sites, I have realized the importance of such tools for organizing your interests and putting everything in one place to manage effectively. I do love that information is easily accessible and shared by those that are actually, readers, consumers, and professionals just like me. When I want to find out information I can look to these sources, not the paid advertisement.