Facebook Pixel
Join our Facebook Community

Technorati launches WTF Digg Clone

Posted By Darren Rowse 31st of January 2007 Social Media 0 Comments

Steve writes that Technorati has launched a new digg clone feature called Technorati WTF (where’s the fire).

It allows users to submit posts that they think are hot – and then people vote for what they think is… hot.

I’m getting an 404 error page when I go there at present so maybe they’re still launching but like Steve I’m a little confused as to why they’re going in this direction.

I guess it makes sense that they might have a service that identifies what’s hot around the web at any given time – but wouldn’t it be more useful to have some sort of an index of hot posts via how many links they have incoming – as that’s what they track with their core service anyway (ie a Tech Meme Clone)? I guess they’re sort of doing this already with their ‘top videos’, ‘top news’, ‘top blooks’ lists.

Perhaps another way to do it would be to index digg, delicious, reddit etc and have a ‘top bookmarks’ list or something.

Anyway – it’s hard to critique something that isn’t working from a screenshot – so hopefully we’ll get to see it working soon enough.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I might be a bit childish but when I see those letters I think of Technorati What The F#@k. Is that just me?

  2. Are we April 1st yet?

    A service whose acronym is WTF?

    AHAHAHA

  3. The WTF link is giving me the following result from Technorati:

    Sorry! We have a zillion pages, but not that one.

  4. WTF? that is either very brilliant or very stupid naming…

  5. WTF? This must be a hoax.

  6. How about they fix everything else that’s broken on their site before launching a new service?

  7. WTF? Well if it gets your attention, it’s doing its job!

  8. It seems kind of strange to develop something they already sort of have. Their “top” categories could be fleshed out on the home page better … and what better sign of “digging it” can you get than when people are willing to link to it to put it into the “top” list.

    Interesting idea Darren; to create a BEST OF THE REST site that indexes … the rest

  9. Ken: amen to that.

  10. I don’t think they’re going to take me away from http://popurls.com

  11. Hmm….

    Nothing there.

    Earth to Technorati… Over…

    – Alister

  12. twitter: Technorati: scheduled downtime late night tonight, for several hours starting at 3:30 am PST.

    Is that the time they are going to introduce WTF??

  13. Technorati should spend time and effort improving their already inaccurate and poor service. Why launch a second when the first one doesn’t even work properly yet?

  14. […] Technorati’s WTF got a WTF? from Problogger and Rubel. I hate to disagree, but I can actually see why Technorati might go in this direction, as it meshes so well with their ‘find the authority, find the resonance’ focus. […]

  15. Sorry for unconstructive post, but WTF is a daft name in my opinion.

  16. Geez.. what a name for a DIGG clone.

    Oh, did they even launch it? Or did they remove it after getting all the unwanted attention from us?

  17. WTF – Technorati clont Digg…

    Meldungen über neue Digg Clones werden heutzutage typischerweise mit einem Gähnen quittiert. Etwas anders liegt die Sache, wenn der Clone von einem Major Player kommt. Das war bei Netscape so, und……

  18. Not only is the name silly, I’d rather Technorati spend time fixing their platform (my blog’s in never-never land again) and answering their email.

  19. Technorati is awful, they want to get around to updating blogs & answering queries before launching yet another Digg clone..

  20. Hey, Darren, I got a “We are down for scheduled maintenance.Please check back.” message. Is that good ?

    I bet technorati is doing some quick spring cleaning before they release WTF. See the screenshot :- http://webmaster-dome.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/wtp-scrshot.JPG

  21. […] If you’re interested in reading more about the new service Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger fame, has a few more insightful thoughts than I. […]

  22. This just made my day… can’t be more funny than WTF… poor technorati developer who probably didn’t realize the acronym WTF…

    But, I think it’s a positive step. It’s just more ways in which blogs can be ranked, and if it’s consolidated, Technorati will definitely gain. Maybe, they can finally expand their categories unlike digg, which is so techno and politico friendly, and not diss the rest of the blogs… no offense to the techies

  23. Update: looks like Technorati is down for maintenance.

  24. I think they’re a little late hoping on the bandwagon. Netscape and Spicypage are fairly recent Digg clones and they don’t seem to have all that much traffic from what I can see (e.g., new posts getting a handful of votes at most). Why add another one to the mix?

    Also I second all the people who pointed out Technorati should focus on fixing their already buggy core features before trying to do more.

  25. I think they’re a little late hoping on the bandwagon. Netscape and Spicypage are fairly recent Digg clones and they don’t seem to have all that much traffic from what I can see (e.g., new posts getting a handful of votes at most). Why add another one to the mix?

    Also I second all the people who pointed out Technorati should focus on fixing their already buggy core features before trying to do more.

    Technorati is probably big enough where they have separate divisions working on different things. Sort of like MS has a Windows team, and an Office team. Throwing more people at a software problem doesn’t create solutions. It creates more problems.

    In any event, don’t be fooled by the number of votes being indicative of the relative power of a given site. Calacanis has bragged that Netscape throws more traffic to a site than digg. How accurate this is, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised given that Netscape’s audience is probably quite a bit different than digg in terms of visitor demographics.

  26. […] with del.icio.us   |   Email this entry   |   TrackBack URI   |   Digg it   |   Track with co.mments   |   Click here for copyright permissions! Copyright 2006 Mathew Ingram […]

  27. Further evidence of Technorati going down the toilet. I’ve never been a fan and I honestly find them pretty much worthless. I’d like to be able to praise them, but just can’t. Anyone else feel the same?

  28. […] ProBlogger Categorias: Internet • Enviar por email• […]

  29. Where did he get the idea…..?

    We have been doing a Hot Stuff feature over at gnmparents.com for about two months.

    We have nominated hot stuff from around the web which goes into a vote off and the winner gets an ‘I’m Hot Stuff’ award, much better idea if you ask me :)

  30. Well, It is working for me now (9:30 est), though I’m sure it’s been working for some time now.

    Haven’t had a lot of time to look around, but it looks interesting.

  31. They seem to be more up than down now, with an announcement of their Wednesday launch.

    Is anyone — anyone at all — going to call WTF by its official name?

  32. It seems to be an easy way to get your blog posts listed at the top of Technorati keyword searches and to stand out from all the other blog post lists. Especially if you can be the only one to WTF a particular keyword.

  33. WTF Digg?…

    I’m pretty sure most of you have already noticed the link to right …

  34. […] A lot of questions, and a lot of comments. I saw 2 interesting posts related to this, both very early, before the actual launch. Darren Rowse from problogger.net and John Chow from johnchow.com are both talking about that. The viewpoint of each is pretty interesting… […]

  35. Anyway – it’s hard to critique something that isn’t working from a screenshot – so hopefully we’ll get to see it working soon enough.

  36. have given very good explanation and thanks for sharing

A Practical Podcast… to Help You Build a Better Blog

The ProBlogger Podcast

A Practical Podcast…

Close
Open