Dave Sifrey leaves to pursue other projects, Google pulls the plug on their pages slashing their traffic potential, downtime raises the ire of the blogosphere and a UI upgrade is met with a resounding “meh”. This has not been a good year to be Technorati. Now, it seems, the one ace they still had to play — their top 100 — is being hijacked by Techmeme.

I’ve raved about Techmeme before, the news aggregator that manages to live up to its hype as Tech New’s front page. Starting today, you will not only be able to read the latest headlines from across the webosphere on the site, but you will also be able to see a Top 100 list detailing the most important blogs based on their appearance on the page. How does it work? The more headlines you make on Techmeme, the higher your placement.

A Nail In The Coffin

While this does seem like yet another nail in Technorati’s coffin, I will be the first to admit that Techmeme probably won’t be able to get the traction that Technorati has managed to generate amongst “normal” bloggers.

Why?

There really is no way to know if you will ever make a Techmeme headline. Most people believe that making it to the front page of Techmeme involves some combination of traffic, linking and keyword positioning. Beyond that, however, the meat and potatoes of Techmeme’s algorithm are poorly understood. If people can’t work towards the top, the list just becomes another whose who of huge blogs you already knew about.

Another problem is that the “Discussion” links will not be counted towards your rating. This is likely to reduce the gaming potential of the system, but it also substantially restricts access to list. Especially since it has been speculated that not all sites are created equal in the eyes of Techmeme.

Web 2.0 Roundup

There is a lot of hype going around about how this will be the end of Technorati. Honestly, this is the absolute least in a laundry list of problems faced by the former king of blog search. If anything, this might be an opportunity for Techmeme to create a more inclusive index. If you really want to take a bite out of the blog rating market, you need to give bloggers are real “chance” to be the headline makers.

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