Technorati and PR firm aim to translate blogosphere
On the heels of the Technorati-Edelman “Deal” (at Technorati, it is called the Technorati-Edelman partnership and at Edelman, it is called the Edelman-Technorati deal) Andy Lark speculates on its implications:
Is Edelman paying or funding software development at Technorati? What specifically does fast-track mean?...What does "exclusive" mean?...Isn't this going to turn a public tool into a proprietary one for a period of time - is it about, at least initially, supporting the growth of the blogosphere for Edelman clients? Why not open it to everyone?..Doesn't this call into question Technorati's independence and neutrality.
According to Technorati:
The clout that bloggers have developed the U.S. is going global. The lessons that marketers have begun to learn here--- get a clue, listen, participate, engage--- will soon apply everywhere. Its against this background that Technorati and Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm, are announcing a relationship that's all about supporting the international growth of the blogosphere. Technorati is accelerating the development of fully localized versions of our service in Chinese, Korean, German, Italian and French.
Technorati’s motivations have been called into question before: Last year, Om Malik portrayed “The Dark Side of Technorati Tags” and lamented that bloggers’ posts were being used by Technorati to divert traffic to the Technorati site:
when I finally got around to upgrading Ecto to its latest release, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to insert tags into the posts. Except for one little catch - the tags were linked to the Technorati site… it bothered me that all the tags I embedded in my post were linking back to Technorati site. Given that very little traffic flows my way from them, I loathe the idea of sending traffic their way
Do Technorati tags and redirection to the Technorati site provide a net benefit for bloggers? Join the conversation: "Talk Back" below to share your thoughts.