Does today's news about Yahoo testing an RSS feed search feature mean that Technorati and Feedster's days are numbered, as Jason Calacanis publicly called for? I hope not, but I fear so. I remember when I was talking with Dave Sifry about working at Technorati, I told him of a conversation that I had with Eric Schmidt of Google, who after a talk told me that Google had no interest in getting into weblog search at that time. Dave said that he hoped to get a good long head start, and had no interest in waking the slumbering beast. That was a year and a half ago.
It is hard for me to see to see what competitive advantage Feedster or Technorati would have over a Yahoo or a Google, once the giants wake from their slumber, as they are appearing to do. And the giants have all the expertise in scaling, something that both startups have had a lot of trouble with.
I know people at both companies, and really hope that they aren't steamrollered by the new Borg -- maybe the companies will get bought for the great people and ideas, like Oddpost and Blogger were? I hope so, it would be a shame for all that talent (and skill at getting good press, in one case) to go to waste.
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Tim, thanks for the kind thoughts. We've got a lot up our sleeves, and welcome other players who want to get into the game. There's lots of room for new innovation in this world, and we're going to continue to run really hard and work our asses off.
In the end, this is all about being of service to our users and customers - that's where we're going to continue to spend out time and energy.
Posted by: Dave Sifry on July 9, 2005 12:42 AMI guess Dave has a keyword search on his name on Technorati -- that's a quick response.
I chatted with him a bit on IM, and he filled me in on what a hard problem blog search is, and how massive the volumes of data are, and how fast they are increasing. He sounds as confident and bullish on IM as he does in person. I wish him and Technorati the best of luck, and hope they prove my fears wrong.
Posted by: Tim on July 9, 2005 12:59 AMI'm not looking to put Technorati or Feedster out of business--nope. I'm looking to get more exposure for blogs.
Technorati has been an excellent prodect 70% of the time for me, and Feedster has been a very good product for me 100% of the time (if you get my point, technorati is slightly better but not close to as stable).
I'm sure these niche search engines will carve a place for themselves in the world, but my concern is not with their business as much as getting the world exposed to blogs. Putting Blog as the second search tab on Yahoo and Google will make citizens media really powerful--as powerful as MSM I think.
Imagine that... you're running Google or Yahoo and overnight you can make blogs as powerful as MSM. That's an opportunity.
I wish nothing but the best to Feedster and Technorati... I hope they keep getting better and grow.
Posted by: Jason on July 9, 2005 11:17 AM