Technorati: What is Authority?…

Over the Fall, I heard Dave Taylor talk about Technorati and question, “what do they mean by authority?…“

For those of you who don’t know, Technorati is a great tool for searching the blogosphere. You can filter these searches by blog posts, tags or blog directory. You can further filter your search by any authority, a little authority, some authority or a lot of authority.Let me give you an example that I gave another company about two weeks ago. They have a client that advertises itself as Colorado’s Wine Country. I was trying to show them that people are talking about American wine and it was time to take advantage of available social media tools to join these conversations.Given this, I performed a search for the exact phrase American wine via blog posts (English). Here’s what I got back:

Any authority: 1,381 blog posts
A little authority: 654 blog posts
Some authority: 326 blog posts
A lot of authority: 34 blog posts

That’s a big difference, especially when one compares the difference between a little and some or some and a lot.

So what exactly is authority and how does technorati define it?When I did some research about a month ago, I found the official definition of authority in the Help section of Technorati – I can’t find it anymore.

If you search further, their forum has some posts from admin stating that authority is the number of unique links a blog gets over the past 180 days. Admin also goes on to refers to David Sifry’s blog were he breaks down the 4 types of authority. It makes interesting reading.Side Note: If you want to hear a great podcast, listen to Technorati: The Focus Group for the Web from Marketing Voices. David touches on authority halfway through the cast.After reading David’s post, I’m still confused as to what this metric truly is. Is it authority of a search term or simple popularity at that given time and place?I mentioned before that I made the Z-List, but this doesn’t make me an authority on social media. I’m also not even popular.

Prior to the Z-List buzz, I think my ranking was 50K, then it went to 20K and now it’s fallen to 23K. As I write this post, I have 239 links from 148 blogs. All this from some link love. Thanks…

Again, what is authority and is it a reliable metric when analyzing the blogosphere? Is it not popularity?

I would argue that it is.

But isn’t that what authority is?Check this out. You can choose any topic and everyone will have a specific opinion about it based on their individual experiences and realities. There will also be a combined majority that agrees with a specific thought and/or take on that particular issue. The more “popular” thinking is then heralded by the majority as being an “authority”.

Am I right or just suffering from too much NightQuil over the past 3 nights?Don’t get me wrong, I love Technorati. It’s cool, it’s slick and it’s great for competitive intelligence. I’m just disappointed that I have to “dig” to find what they actually mean by authority and then there are no definitions that I can find on the site that breaks down the 4 different types of authority.

I think we have an opportunity here to formally establish metrics for searches like this that transcend all aspects of business.Any thoughts?…

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Social Media: And the Next Generation…

Wow, what a morning. My family and I have been passing around the same cold for the past week and today we all decided to simply do nothing and try to get healthy.

After playing games with both children, I decide to take a break and check my work email. About five minutes into this, my 3 year-old bum rushes our office, jumps on my lap and shouts “…let’s play some games man!…“

I’m thinking games on the computer? What 3 year-old plays games on the computer? When I was 3 years old (I’m 37), I played with rocks and sticks from the woods in our backyard.

My daughter immediately takes a leadership role and commands me to visit a number of her favorite sites – noggin and nick jr.

We then spend the next 2 hours bowling with Max & Ruby, speed racing with The Backyardigans and playing dress up with The Wonderpets.

I have to say I’m impressed and not by my daughters skill and reaction time. These sites are extensive. They have all faucets of social media – from blogs and forums for both kids & parents, video casts, interactive games / arts & crafts, etc..

Wow, I wonder how social media will after my children ten years from now…

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Implementing a Blog: An Argument…

I know I’ve been missing over the past few weeks, but I’ve been completely focused on the launch of my latest project.

As stated earlier, I was put in charge redesigning our company’s website. It’s a private site that is used on a daily basis by over 35,000 customers and about 100 internal clients.It was a huge undertaking.

To meet the time frame given to me by Senior Team, I had to teach myself dotnetnuke and html as I lost internal resources to two other competing projects.As the dust settles, I feel great knowing that my Team was able to produce something that our competitors don’t have.

A Purple Cow.This site now holds an incredible amount of new and updated training material along with an established virtual community.No one else has this. I’m also incredibly excited about the future of this project.

Last December, I implemented a Redesign Blog for our clients to educate them on what we were doing, why we were doing it and how they could expect to benefit from this new resource.

All the comments are moderated. I also made it public rather than sending out 35K invitations. I believe this has a potential benefit of attracting new clients.

As I write, the blog has had over 3K visitors since 12/13/06 and has generated at least 5 new ideas for future marketing initiatives that the Team didn’t even think about. I hope to implement each of these in the coming weeks as they appear to be quick wins and easily added to future phases of the project.

If anything, this blog gives our clients a voice during the redesign and I plan to continue using it for the next month or so.

My advice, if you can use one – do it.

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