Yesterday, Technorati released a new beta version of their service. The design looks cleaner and neater. The search still seems to be slow when you drill down to details like sort by authority. They did improve the search from those early days and I wrote about them no longer being rotten here.

Maybe Google has spoiled us, because if we have to wait more than a second or two for search results then we’ll find and/or use another search. Scaling and maintaining lightning fast search is something that all three (Google, Yahoo, MSN) big search engines have dealt with extremely well but something I would say Technorati still needs to spend time getting better at doing. Hire some scaling engineers, smarter techs, whatever it takes.

In fact, search speed is the one and only improvement I’d really like to see in the next version of Technorati. Until that is solved, Mr. Sifry, then cosmetics, features and fun will only keep people’s attention fleetingly. I like the service and have used the API with BlogCompare but I really wish the search was faster. Maybe the beta version will be when it leaves beta.

Speaking of Dave Sifry, he’s currently looking for feedback:

And please keep sending us your feedback! It is invaluable, and has helped us immeasurably to improve the service.

I just used Technorati to find out what some other bloggers are saying about the new Technorati beta:

Greg Yardley: “… the new features are quite useful — especially the ability to get an RSS feed for individual Technorati tags”
Alexoid: “I must admit that I love the new design and layout.”
Joi Ito: “It’s much nicer looking and hopefully easier to use than before.”
Bittsplitter.net: “When I took a look at the source and saw an AJAX Javascript library I assumed it would be for the search box, to provide a completion list of commonly used terms and sources. I didn’t see that in using the interface however.”
Jon Jantsch: “If you are a Technorati fan, you’ll love the facelift they released in beta today.”
jystewart.net: “The new design is a huge improvement, making it much easier to get to information and seeming to me to make the site much more approachable for a newcomer.”

Comments about the new Technorati Beta:
Sifry’s alert: see several comments here

Now it’s your turn. Please leave your comments and/or trackback from your blog on the new Technorati beta.

Of course, can’t forget the Technorati Tags: technorati, beta

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