'Rest In Peace, Technorati'

I used to visit the blog aggregator website Technorati.com to see which sites had linked to mine. Their "blog reactions" feature was one of the most valuable services a blogger could use, especially for small up-and-comers. I'm pretty sure Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin never used it because only about 8 trillion blogs already link to them. But for the little guys it was invaluable.

Anyhow, about seven or eight months ago Technorati changed their "reactions" feature during a major site redesign and it hasn't worked since. Various users have complained for months on a support site to no avail, other than the occasional wan promise that it's in the works.

Today, Dividist wrote the epitaph for a once-valuable site.

A perfect example of a company completely losing its way. This was exactly what brought most bloggers back to Technorati every day. This was the one thing that Technorati did better than anyone else. I can only assume that they ran out of money at exactly the wrong time, could no longer afford the infrastructure needed to support this capability in an exploding blogosphere, could not raise money during the downturn and then made a fatal mistake...

They listened to an impatient VC insist they cut costs and reinvent themselves as a quasi social network because - you know - "social networks are hot and cool and look how much buzz twitter and facebook get."

So now you have a site that provides no value to anyone except potentially the top 100 sites, who have no real need for what Technorati offers.

A classic clusterfork. Rest In Peace Technorati. There is still no service that is as good and useful to the average blogger as you once were. But now you are completely useless to everyone.

I really can't disagree.