Check out the refreshed Technorati: David Sifry unveiled a new version of Technorati today with improvements made in usability, design and scope of search. The greatest change is the look of the homepage and I cannot get over the difference. I completely failed to recognize the page and it looked like a MFA (EDIT: Made for Adsense) MySpace theme page at first glance and the ticker at the top is almost completely useless to me since it is almost unreadable.
I am sure the technological innovations will be welcomed and the elimination of the “search silos” will make them more competitive against Google Blogsearch, but I think that brand recognition should not be wiped away completely but much rather phased in an out to benefit the novelty and retain customer comfort in the brand. Techcrunch has a writeup on the news.
I am a frequent user of Technorati, especially since it is integerated into the WordPress dashboard and is a good way, along with Google Blogsearch, to keep a finger on the pulse of the conversation surrounding my blogs and my topics. Just to make sure that my Technorati world will not change that much, I clicked on the “More >>” link in my Dashboard this morning and the speed and cleanliness of the resulting search page assured me.
i don’t know what MFA means, but seriously – a ticker? WTF? for a brand that’s consistently been pushing web standards, that’s a giant leap backwards.
Adam, clarified MFA: Made for AdSense
Like it except for one thing: that annoying ‘matrix’ style news feeder band at the very top. It’s too out of sync with the rest of the design and very distracting. Take that away and they have a winner.
Ack! Opera doesn’t like some of the CSS!
Aside from a few mis-placed images, I think the redesign is pretty good. Not sure what value the ticker will add, but it’s out-of-the-way enough for me to ignore it.
I have to agree, that ticker is awful. What’s wrong with a nice dynamic tag cloud? Oh, those are passe, too? Well, couldn’t they have come up with something novel to reveal the technorati zeitgeist?
db
Takes a bit of getting used to the new design, but it does look great and very Web2.0, unless of course you take into account that stupid ticker!
It looks awesome. 🙂 I’m glad they made it look better.
i much prefered the last design, this one ok granted its a bit cleaner but it just doesnt feel right for what technorati should be. although i do like the http://s.technorati.com
I like the design and don’t mind the idea of a ticker, but the current one is unreadable.
What a disaster.
The new theme is way too dark, not so web 2.0 like the last one due to loss of whitespace. MARQUEE in small, unreadable COURIER NEW? What were they thinking?
There was no real need to redesign, it was fine as it was. Although I welcome the usability improvements, despite it already being very usable.
Oh dear.
The ticker is pretty horrid, various searches keep breaking and the site is up and down more often than Paris Hilton.
+1 for effort -10 for usability.
Oh my, that was not pretty. I have always liked Technorati, but this will scare people away. I hope that we will see a quick revert to the old look and then wait for a new attempt where things are done differently…
I prefer the old look as well. However, this is definitely a wee bit faster.
Of course, I am still trying to understand the new rating system. Anyone have a handle on that?