Jeremiah Owyang discusses how web tools and social media enable companies to connect with customers

The Uncles and Technorati Authority

May 05th, 2007 | Category: Social Media

Last week, I attended the blogger dinner in SF with Hugh McCloud. While there, I ran into Dave Winer, one of internet uncles in our industry. (Uncle is a term of respect in our industry, I’m not sure if age is part of attribute). I thanked him personally for helping to bring blogging (RSS too, which means podcasting too) to our industry, it’s been nearly 10 years, and I told him it helped to propel my career forward, and I appreciate that. Thanks Dave.

On somewhat related note, Technorati seems to show an “Authority Ranking” now. I have no idea what it means, but my Authority is 958, and my rank is 2218, which I suspect is the same measure of incoming links from before. There’s currently no info when I hit the help area on it, if anyone has any clue to how the Authority number is calculated please let me know.

15 Comments so far

  1. Brian Auer May 5th, 2007 9:19 am

    I’m pretty sure it’s just the number of unique blogs linking to you in the last 180 days. I don’t think that number changed from the previous number, but I could be wrong.

  2. Sean ODriscoll May 5th, 2007 1:16 pm

    Not sure I get the new “authority” - Links I understanding - it’s objective. Authority is a whole new term full of subjectivity - can’t say I think this is good, especially for newbies. Ironic the change does not seem to be explained on their site - at least no where real obvious. if you click for an explanation, you get the old model explained.

    sean
    www.communitygrouptherapy.com

  3. jeremiah_owyang May 5th, 2007 6:07 pm

    If links coming in is considered Authority, then some A hole who says some outrageous things could be considered authoritative if everyone links to him to tell him to be quiet.

    Links alone can’t be authority.

  4. Christopher Salazar May 5th, 2007 6:26 pm

    Hey Jeremiah. When you find out what authority means, please let me know. I’m ranked at 15, but I have no idea what this means, especially since I do not blog nearly as much as you.

    Wish I could have gone to the blogger dinner, Im determined to start going to these events! See you at lunch 2.0!

  5. jeremiah_owyang May 5th, 2007 7:47 pm

    Chris my friend, Authority is always going to be a subjective rating. everyone will perceive it differently.

  6. brian May 5th, 2007 8:00 pm

    Some good reading on authority from Technorati’s Dorion Carroll here: http://dorion.blogspot.com/2007/05/technorati-authority-and-some-cosmetic.html Lots of links as well.

  7. brian May 5th, 2007 8:01 pm

    Even more official here: http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/05/354.html

  8. Allen Stern May 6th, 2007 5:26 am

    Jeremiah - I actually included your site in my list of examples yesterday morning:
    http://www.centernetworks.com/technorati-adds-authority-figures-to-results

    Thanks Brian - I have updated my post with your official links!

  9. Allen Stern May 6th, 2007 5:27 am

    BTW Jeremiah… this is what T’rati says about authority:
    Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

    Baloney!

  10. Dorion Carroll May 6th, 2007 9:58 am

    Jeremiah, thank you for blogging about the change in terminology on Technorati. As your readers may have noticed we now explain what this phrase means on the Technorati Weblog.

    We have used this definition for quite a long time now, but were not as clear as we could have been. The word “Authority” has been in use on the site as a drop down option in search results and allows you to filter results by varying degrees of Technorati Authority.

    Thanks again, Dorion

  11. jeremiah_owyang May 6th, 2007 12:36 pm

    Wow, I never realized this subnote on this post would get so much attention. After 24 hours later, it’s at the top of techmeme.

  12. Technorati’s New Authority : The Last Podcast May 6th, 2007 3:50 pm

    […] Data Mining, Mashable!, Bloggers Blog, Digital Inspiration, CenterNetworks, Web Strategy, parislemon, franticindustries, rexduffdixon.com and ProBlogger Blog Tips — Related Posts — […]

  13. Blogs and the Technorati Authority » SELaplana May 7th, 2007 2:47 am

    […] I’s a reverse ranking method. The higher number of your blog authority has the higher is your blog ranking. This thing has been discussed here, Brian Chin and Jeremiah wonder about it too, while Bloggers Blog taught us how to create a chart about it. Allen Stern thought that Technorati has a complecated formula in ranking blogs… […]

  14. Silver May 8th, 2007 1:13 pm

    I described the Technorati Authority change at my blog - there’s some more details in my post about what is and isn’t counted.

  15. Eric Nakagawa May 11th, 2007 12:36 am

    I noticed this change too… and I really don’t like it… I usually go to Technorati to see how close we are to breaking the covted top 100.

    Now, they’ve added another dimension… which sort of makes the Technorati rank irrelevant … changes the game.

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