Technorati degenerates into a waste of time

Once upon a time, Technorati was a very good site for bloggers. It rated blogs according to their activity, number of readers, content, etc., and provided a useful overall 'authority' ranking.

Unfortunately, it seems the site has fallen prey to its own success. They implemented a new look and structure recently, but apparently they've spent so much effort on the 'bling' that they've completely lost sight of their reason for existence - the blogging community. Innumerable bloggers (including yours truly) have been complaining for weeks (some for months) that their formerly highly-ranked blogs have suddenly been 'de-rated' to a minimal rating of 1; that current and recent posts are not being reflected; and that it's impossible to get any response out of Technorati. I've tried telephone calls (fruitless, and never returned); e-mails (not answered); and posts on Technorati's support bulletin board (which have apparently been ignored). I'm far from alone in this: the number of complaints on their support forum is enormous . . . but they seem deaf, dumb and blind over there.

It's sad to see a once-useful site degenerate into nothing more than a waste of bandwidth and pixels, particularly when there's no-one else offering the level of analysis that used to be found there. Looks like a good opportunity for some online entrepreneur to fill the void with something more useful - and more responsive to its constituency!

Peter