Techorati's WTF Feature is a Great Idea

Technorati has recently launched a feature called WTF (short for Where's the Fire, duh) that provides fast answers to what the blogosphere is buzzing about in real time.

The Technology Evangelist team has attempted to explain Technorati to thousands of people in technology presentations over the past year. Probably the toughest thing for audience members to grasp is the speed of the service. It seems unbelievable that someone in Omaha, Nebraska could write something on their blog, click publish, and see it show up in Technorati's search results only a minute later.

The Top Searches list is always an interesting thing to talk about in a live presentation since just about anything could appear in that area. For example here are the top searches as of 3:30pm CST on Feb 1, 2007:

Today's list is rather tame with the traditional exception of Paris Hilton.

One problem I found with the "Top Searches" list before WTF launched was the noise created by people blogging about the list. For example, if I was unfamiliar with the Marions Kochbuch story, I would click to search for that term only to find a series of recent blog posts mentioning that the term was high ranking on Technorati but often not explaining what the story behind the popularity actually was.

With WTF, I can now find out what the buzz is, then search for blogs covering the story if the WTF blurbs whet my appetite.

Niall Kennedy offers some great background on WTF led to the creation of WTF:

"Sitting around the Technorati offices someone might blurt out "WTF did Paris Hilton do now?" as a mass of searchers look for the phone numbers of celebrities, night vision camera footage, or Tinkerbell's latest wardrobe. Back then most Technorati employees sat in the same room, and someone probably already knew why Paris Hilton, Dreamhost, or Wikipedia was an especially popular search that day and would answer the proclamation of puzzlement almost right away."

And David Sifry offers some insights into the launch.

Comments

1. Posted by: Cariann on February 4, 2007 7:24 AM:

Ha, ha, ha! In case you need a visual example of Technorati's WTF... maybe this will help:
http://www.ifilm.com/video/2818937/channel/superbowl

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