Technorati CEO Jalichandra: You Blew It

One of the discussions I was looking forward to at BlogWorldExpo was the "new media moguls" panel. The panel included the CEOs from b5media (Jeremy Wright), Pajamas Media (Roger Simon), Technorati (Richard Jalichandra) and a Director from Weblogs. The panel was moderated by Jason Shellen, a former Google employee who seemed very nervous during the chat. I was most interested in hearing from Richard as he has been in the Technorati CEO position for about a month or so and it was his first chance to meet a good landscape of users. Frankly, he blew it.

First a note. Moderator Jason focused almost the entire time exclusively on Pajamas and b5media. Third place for mic time went to AOL and last was Technorati. This made it a bit difficult for Richard to discuss Technorati’s plans but I believe he had a responsibility to speak up. This is the first part of how he blew his chance to win us all over.

Technorati gets bashed almost daily by someone and I have written about my dislikes in the past as well. From their inability to count links, to 0’s all around, to the WTF, everyone is wondering what’s up over there. Richard continued to leave us wondering what’s in it for them. While leaving the room, another attendee commented to me, "Who cares about Technorati anymore?". Maybe it’s no surprise that the large Technorati booth was empty most of the time.

The little that he did speak (along with his blog posts) made one thing clear: he is most interested in the Top 100 and their opinion of Technorati. He tried to back up but wasn’t able to do so even saying, "most of you in this room are included in the Tecnorati databsae." Most of you? Why would anyone attending this conference not be included? This makes absolutely no sense to me.

In business, it’s important to treat your best customers best. We did that at my previous employer. But why would a blog at number 30 be more important for Technorati than a blog at 30,000 or 3 million? The higher rated blogs aren’t "helping" Technorati’s bottom line any more than the other blogs are.

Richard, I sure hope we will hear more from you on what Technorati’s plans are besides only showing interest in the Top 100 and removing posts after 6 months. It would be good to see Technorati succeed and to turn around the negativity that is the current Technorati vibe. Perhaps you could start with my 5 Quick Suggestions for Improving Technorati.