Technorati: infuse new ideas into your analysis

I've heard of it for a while now, but never went to the site and for some reason thought it was like Engadget, or Gizmodo. I didn't realize that its a site that scours millions of blogs and can give a great pulse on whats new in the blogosphere regarding technology. It indexes some 27 million blogs and gives you the most relevant and recent postings. Check more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati

I thought it might be a great way for new (ok... and experienced) analysts to get ideas on what people are saying about the site they are performing analysis on, or the client they're working with. Chances are if folks are blogging about it, they've been to the site and are directing more people there as well, with the bloggers sentiments in mind. It may sound elementary but its a great way to correlate what is being said to what is actually happening on the site. Is the blogger really liking a new product, do they hate the new technology?

Think to yourself, by them blogging about something, are people going to take them seriously and if so how can we use this to our benefit and recommend actions taking what the the data, shows, and the qualitative audience is talking about it? Obviously there are a lot of tools that do this, and take much of the manual work out of it, but sites like Technorati are a quick gut-check to brainstorm new ideas.


Here are some other really great resources a peer forwarded to me that allows you to do the same thing:

Searching Blogs:
Google Blog Search
Ask.com is also a good source for searching blogs.
IceRocket (can track conversations over time and display trends in graphical format; good for monitoring buzz. Also indexes MySpace posts and images)
Feedster
BlogPulse (tracks conversations like IceRocket. Also profiles top bloggers with info on who they are and what they write about).
Opinmind.com (classifies results by bias, i.e., tone)
TalkDigger (blog search engine aggregator)
BlogBlusiness.com (directory of blogs about different business related topics)
Technorati also has watch lists, like google news does. Also has a top 100 blogs list to see most influential bloggers, based on hos many links they have from other bloggers. Let’s you narrow your search by authority of blogger too.
Sphere.com results based on influence also.
Another good source for finding good blog search engines and directories: http://masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

Searching Podcasts
Harder to do but not implossible.
Podscope.com and Podzinger.com
Enter search term and get taken to a list of podscasts that mention that term. You can click on a control button and listen to the exact segment in the program where the search for term is spoken. Pretty damn cool. However, they don’t cover every podcast out there, so that’s a limitation.
Podcast Alley (owned by PodShow Network; is a podcast directory)
Podcasting News (also a directory)
Podcast.net (directory)
iPodder.org (directory)
Another good source for finding podcasts: http://masternewmedia.org/news/2005/05/20/where_to_submit_your_podcasts.htm