Chances are, if you read this blog, you read some or all of the following: TechMeme, Digg, BlogRunner, and Google News. Today, with the launch of "the Percolator," Technorati enters into this space. As it turns out, speaking with Richard Jalichandra was a commodity item today. I had the opportunity to speak with Technorati Marketing guy and company spokesperson Aaron Krane today, instead, and we had a great discussion (audio embedded at the end of the post).
During our conversation, Krane differentiated the Technorati memetracker from some of the others by emphasizing the amount of data that is in their index, and that as such, there isn't much that the all seeing eye of Technorati can't see, and therefore highlight down to the proper category. Additionally, Percolator hopes to also capture stories on the rise much quicker, rapidly drawing comparisons and link bridges between different blogs as they happen. If a smaller, lower authority blog gets the scoop, then they get the headline - subsequent bloggers then file in under that blog. This levels the playing field a bit, and provides attention to the B-Listers (and below) - an often gripe of the less linked to members of Techmeme.
Some Side By Side Comparison
I took a screenshot earlier this evening of Technorati's top story: "Nokia to offer unlimited music downloads... for free." The primary headline on Percolator went to a blog called "RegHardware", with one "attention link" from the Register, and three other links, from "mediadistricts.com", The Register. At the time of the screenshot, Percolator had only noticed the story two hours before.
As compared to the Techmeme index, where it ranked near the last spot on the page. Interestingly, more blogs are actually listed here as having mentioned and discussed the story, and only occupied headline-space for part of the day (best I could tell; I haven't been keeping the closest eye on Techmeme all day). Paging back through the timestamps on Techmeme, it appeared that it noticed the story roughly the same time as Technorati, but it never rose very high in the ranks, being crowded out, ironically, by the Technorati story at the top of the page. There were 19 total blogs in the discussion linked below the headline.
And on BlogRunner, where it was near, but not quite at, the bottom of the page. Interestingly, Blogrunner noticed the story 17 hours before, about a 15 hour lead time on Technorati and Techmeme (at least as a headline item). The pile-on effect was thick here, with full-coverage showing 69 blogs and news sources covering the topic and weighing in on the discussion.
What Technorati Does Best
At the moment (and this could be simply because its been turned on for a day, or I picked a particularly weird story to work with), it doesn't appear to be the fastest to index, nor does it appear to be the most exhaustive. As we learn more about Technorati and the percolator, perhaps we'll come to see more strengths shine through.
One of the topics that Aaron and I covered in the discussion was the nuanced difference in the eyes of the law as well as the eyes of an algorithm the difference between a memetracker, splog, link blog and plaigerist. As such, it seems that there is some filtering process in place where there is a minimum authority system in play preventing just any blog from appearing on the discussion list. It didn't come up in the discussion exactly what those requirements were for a blog to show up in the discussion list - I can't imagine the requirements are altogether too stiff, as the aim is to level the playing field between the lesser known blogs as well as the A-Listers.
Still, to prevent the folks who simply copy RSS feeds into their own blogs from clogging the discussion list, there must be some criteria in play preventing the sources showing up in the other trackers from showing up here. Eventually, there will be some refinement done there, as well as the addition of RSS feeds for the different categories (a welcome feature for those of us looking to get in on the discussion early and often without leaving the comfort of our respective feed-readers), according to Krane.
Other Topics Discussed
We went into the philosophies as well as the goals behind Percolator; quite an interesting discussion. As mentioned before, we also had an interesting tangent on the diminishingly obvious lines (in the eyes of the law and robots alike) between malicious and useful content. The interview is worth a listen if you have around twenty minutes or so to spare. The file is available via the RSS embedded enclosure, or via the embedded player below.