Technorati Favorites Is a Glorified OPML File
As usual, the blogosphere’s response to a hot new feature is (largely) to gush. Technorati announced a new favorites feature, and everybody goes ga-ga, i.e. it’s “cool” so it must be good.
Sorry to play the skeptic, but I think it’s a big yawn. So now I can have my reading list on Technorati along with everyone else’s — this does more to help us understand Technorati’s ambitions than it does to solve the filtering/information overload problem — did we really need one more popularity contest?
Of course, it will drive more traffic (I put the “add to favorites” button on my site to see what happens), but it’s only adding to the chaos. (Interesting to note that my last high-traffic post got more traffic from Technorati than Memeorandum.)
David Sifry also announced that you can now export an OPML file for Technorati Blog Finder results — great, one more semi-filtered source to deal with.
To be constructive, here are some features I would find interesting:
1. Create a favorites list of individual posts
I don’t want a list of bloggers who are more likelihood to post something interesting (by virtue of their inclusion in the favorites lists of bloggers I trust) — I want a list of the blog posts that actually ARE interesting.
- Show a ranking of bloggers who appear (or whose posts appear, assuming feature #1) on the largest number of favorites lists.
This would of course produce the infamous “A” list, but it would also point to new arrivals at the top, like Kent Newsome.
(Speaking of Kent Newsome, there’s an example of “Ideas Matter” — he’s earned his pace not because he won a popularity content — he’s smart, insightful, and he works really hard.)
If Technorati really wanted to revolutionize the way I read, they would create ONE place for me to go where I could see the BEST POSTS from my favorite bloggers and the BEST POSTS from their favorites all in one place. What constitutes the “best” posts? Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?