The Failure of Technorati
August 9, 2005 at 1:02 PM
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Today Paul has pointed out something I have been complaining about for some time now regarding Technorati. His post is entitled Technorati AKA Sorry there are too many requests... and aptly so. I mentioned this same issue in their first redesign (see Comments on the Technorati redesign), and in their most recent redesign (see Thoughts on the Technorati beta). So why is it that the folks at Technorati are still failing to deliver one of the most fundamental principals of a quality web service: reliability. Why is it that this is the one thing they decided to pass over not once, not twice, but three times? For this reason, I and many other potential Technorati users have chosen not to use their service on a regular basis. Technorati, are you really listening to your users?
Comments
pwn3d!
Owned? Maybe so, but you can't say I haven't tried. I even offered to give them free consulting on this issue. But no.. not a single peep from the folks at Technorati.
I recently commented on this very issue. I can't for the life of me understand why Technorati would expend so much energy on a new interface, when the backend is so obviously in need of repair. They need engineers, not designers.
Yes we are!
GaBuBu: Really? Because it doesn't seem like it. The consensus seems to be that Technorati has a long ways to go to be reliable. Ask any user.
Here is a perfect example of why I feel Technorati just doesn't care to listen to it's own users.
Rashmi Sinha digs in to Technorati and rightly so. The redesign is polluted with poor IA decisions right from the beginning. I ask again, Technorati, are you listening to your users?
Hum, at first sight I quite liked the new design and haven't used the Technorati site enough (just an RSS feed to see my linkage through Bloglines) to get really annoyed by the performance. One issue which I've had is when sending first-time users to it. People usually get utterly confused by it. IceRocket is much more straighforward for the first time user and yet offers (most of) the depth expected by advanced users. God knows what's happening, maybe it's financial drought, maybe it's a spending freeze (development, hardware, bandwidth)... I just wish they told people what's going on because they're losing friends daily.
