What is the point of Technorati these days?

Up to last week our main view of Technocrapi is that they were still a better blog search engine than Google blogs, and the blog linking and ranking stats were more useful (and more accurate, if that word can be applied, than Google) but over the last week we've decided they have lost it. Doing our monthly stats last week we noticed our link stats had nearly halved, as had our ranking. But when we looked at our linkage history it was still going fairly strong (and no, there was no vast tranche of links we garnered 6 months ago that have now fallen off the Technoradar)

And now we see they are going to become their own tech blog, by allowing us the exciting opportunity to write for them (and by first f*cking up the stats of existing Tech blogs so they all give up, one wonders ):

Become a Technorati Writer!

Technorati is entering into the next phase of our evolution: original content.

Beginning in October, Technorati will feature original content on the site written by bloggers just like you! This is an amazing opportunity to give your writing vast exposure, become known as an expert in your field/s of interest, and to join a vibrant writer community.

In vain did I look for the bit about getting paid.......

Next Web (who are also having problems) reports:

The Ranking seems to be the only really interesting feature at Technorati for us right now and our rank even helps us sell our advertising. In this case it probably just scares away potential advertisers though as it just doesn’t work to ask people to reload a page ten times to see actual results. Unfortunately Technorati hasn’t responded to our numerous requests to fix this.

Now Venture Chronicles has a different take:

It’s easy to have missed what Technorati has been up to but CEO Richard Jalichandra has done an impressive job building a vertical content network and advertising network. In the process he has extricated himself from being in the competitive crosshairs of Google doing something that Google is very very good at (search) and putting the company on a path to compete with companies that they have a better standing against, like Glam.

Darn right its easy to have missed it - does anyone actually use Technocrapi as an Alt Zine? The world needs another Tech Blog 'Zine like its needs another New Media PR agency - the things breed in the sewers*, the market is already saturated and its not a rich seam to mine. In our view Technorati would be better off doing what it was designed to do, ie content search and back end stats - and doing it damn well. Venture Chronicle says thats a Bad Business, but fer Chrissake, (near) real time search is all the rage now and these guys were getting down there 3 years before the rest of the flock! That would surely be transmutable into helping with content and Ad management, a far harder - and thus more valuable - service to offer. However, in this rush to be the Next TechMeme or TechCrunch or whatever, they have clearly taken their eye off the Techstat ball.

And when the attempts to be Yet Another Blog Aggregator fails (which it will, they are coming into a crowded and marginally profitable field far too late) they risk having nothing left.

*Well, so many are so full of sh*t....