Andrew Chen in her brief article titled,"5 Reasons Why Feedster and Technorati will Die" questions the future of Technorati and Feedster. In a nutshell,Andrew writes,with Microsoft announced that they are supporting RSS search. The future of Technorati and Feedster is a discount acquisition by one of the portals, maybe at the end of this year.
First - MS,GG,YAHOO business model is ad supported
Second- the technology is not significantly different than traditional search
Third - their function puts them straight on the traintracks of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft - Sites like Technorati/Feedster connect people with information, except the information is on blogs and pages.
Fourth - there isn't a first-mover, platform-like advtantage. Though technorati has API’s available and if Google decides to support RSS search and opens up their own APIs,the attraction is lost. Jeremy Zawodny has indicated that Yahoo wanted to be the first to be out the RSS search.
Fifth- (and this point will be a long one) Feedster and Technorati have, fundamentally, the wrong UI paradigm.(Browse Vs Search Paradigm). Dave Sifry, CEO of technorati responded by saying that 90% of Technorati that is "under the surface" so to speak ,and shall begin to surface in the future.
My Take: I agree with the views of Andrew. Both Technorati and Feedster need to move fast and come out with all their added features quickly before Google,Yahoo. Microsoft sweep their place. Tehcnorati and Feedster have lot of information and can leverage them much better in terms of personalisation, adaptation and community building. Feedster is trying this with their my feedster approach.
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