Basically, Technorati sounded like a cool idea. But, basically, it sucks.
What do I expect out of Technorati?
- That it ranks my site on a real time basis. Guess what? The site has one ranking when I'm looking at the list of blogs that I have claimed, and another ranking when I am looking at the blog page itself. And neither one gets updated more than once a month. A month!!! Maybe every two weeks. Certainly not every minute, that's for sure. And who can trust the result, anyway?
- That I could check sites linking to mine. Guess what? I can check some sites linking to mine, but not most of them. Tons of blogs, and they do have RSS, just don't get picked up by Technorati. And of course, anything that's not RSS'd doesn't get picked up.
- That I could find my own posts and other posts based on keywords associated with my blog or posts. Guess what? I can, sometimes. Sometimes it takes days to pick up new posts, however. By which time, the post doesn't appear in the search results until page fifteen.
- That I could view, um, any information. Guess what? I get this message more than 70% of the time I look for something: "Sorry, we couldn't complete your search because we're experiencing a high volume of requests right now. Please try again in a minute or add this search to your watchlist to track conversation." And I've been getting it for over two months. What the hell? What else do you do, Technorati, besides respond to searches? If you can't do that, why do I bother?
Blogger
What is going on with Blogger? Between the times it simply can't ping itself, loses my posts (not once have I been able to retrieve a supposed "auto-saved article"), can't republish my blog, indicates that there is no permission to view my blog, and so on. Sheesh.
And oh, yeah:
How do I access the pictures that I have uploaded?
Why can't I add tags, like every other blog site?
Why are the comment pages not formatted like my main site?
Why are the RSS feeds so slow in updating?
Why are 90% of your sites spam?
Del.icio.us
I've been there. I've created an account. I still have no idea how to find anything or do anything useful with it.
Whose bright idea was it that thousands of random people can make sense of the vast garbled tangle of the internet when it was thousands of random people who created this vast tangle to begin with? A thousand lists linking to a thousand pages are no easier to navigate than the thousand pages were to begin with.
Why would seeing someone else's bookmarks be any better than searching on a search engine? I may serendipitously find a good site? I can't do that by searching for key words?
BTW: I just tried to access it and it didn't load.
Google, aside from sliding down the slippery slope into scumitude (China, video search, book search, privacy policies, desktop security, ad-sense bullying policies, etc...) is still crap, believe it or not. It's just the best crap that we have.
- Good luck finding something if you don't know how to use quotes and the exact right keywords. Or if you don't know English.
- Why do my search result show 1,200,000 pages returned, and then end after 3 pages? Even after I click "show me related pages"?
- How many millions of sites are still abusing your search results? A hundred people could manually go through 50,000 sites a day for a month and cut out half of the crap, or tag it as "not a page", "duplicate", "spam", and so on. You're not a government service, you are a private company.
- Searches that return different results if you change the order of the words.
- Duplicated results from the first page of results on the second page of results, and the third, and so on.
What next?
Ladies and Gentlemen: Web 2.0 is here and it's no different from Web 1.0 . Just a lot of losers stroking each other's egos that they're better because they can submit funny videos and create some interesting blog posts once in a while. Let's hope Web 3.0 is better.
What do I want out of Web 3.0?
I don't want to surf. My browser should be a pane with four boxes.
In the upper left box I search for other people/site snippets. Saved searches should give me back previous results first. The rest of it should be ordered by the type of information that I need. If I'm a college professor, I want to see academic stuff first. If I'm a music-a-holic, I want to see music sites first. And so on. And I want to be able to junk or pin sites for search relevancy. All results are snippets returned to this box.
In the upper right is my mail and my headline news. Buttons to let me filter and so on.
In the lower left I write, edit pictures or documents, and so on. Buttons to let me: mail, publish, save, and so on. Another which lets me select whom to let view and what tags to assign (otherwise, tags and permission are done automatically).
In the lower right I see an application: a picture viewer, a music tuner, new movie releases, a snippet browser, an IM client, and so on.
Naturally, I can expand one of the boxes to full screen, if I want to.
If I want to read what someone else has posted, I subscribe to their snippets by tag which come into my mail or my snippet browser. If I want to find what people have posted, I search for tags or text in the first box.
I want everything that happens in one box to make sense in the other boxes if I drag and drop. And I want to be able to export from any of these boxes to any format I desire, if necessary.
Is that too much to ask?
Yehuda
Update: some trackbacks for Web 3.0:
Web 3.0
What to expect,
Technorati tags: Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Technorati, Blogger, Google,
4 comments:
While I don't feel as strongly about the tools as you seem to be, you make good points. I'm still hoping squidoo.com picks up enough steam to work like it should. It's similar to del.ico.is but with far, far, better formatting.
Google really needs to get its ethics straightened out, and soon.
The big point is: no more websites.
No more thisr and thatr, myspace or yourspace. Enough.
Web 3.0 means I create on my own space on my computer, and it's automatically shared already, no matter what it is. I just have to set how I want it shared.
Web 3.0 means no more forums here and forums there, sign ons here and sign ons there. My computer is my id, forums run in my browser no matter where they are based. I just select it in my fourth window and run.
No more writing her and writing there. I just write and give permissions. Anyone that wants it can take it, and anyone I send it to who opts to recive it gets it.
In other words, Web 3.0 means no need for web pages. Just components.
Yehuda
I admit it, I missed the big point. In the meantime, what's the best way to organize the material that exists? There's no best answer. Instead, we need all these different options to see what works best for each of us.
I think Web 3.0 needs to be all about intelligence. That way, you can have the personalised space you're talking about Yehuda. Web 2.0 is generally dumb right now...
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