Radio UserLand Notes

Dave Winer: "I don't know about the rest of you, but they've been taking my data, and snarking behind my back. Everyone says they like Technorati, until you admit that you don't really, then they fess up that they don't really either."

I like Technorati in the same way I like Google. They provide me a service in exchange for my content. I can always take my content and go home but then what's the point?

Steve's Technorati Analogy:

I have a house. The house has a yard. The yard has a garden. The garden has pretty flowers that change each day (unless I don't feel like changing them--follow me here). I let the general public wander by and see my garden of flowers each day living under the assumption that no one will rip a flower out of the ground and take it for their own.

--Technorati analogy ahead--

Gardenorati searches every city in the world and finds gardens that are publically accessible, generates an index of the data and sells guided tours and maps to the gardens. People take the tours and stop by my garden. I notice the traffic and I'm happy to give guided tours, pointing out all of the great flowers and the work I've put in to each planting. After awhile, I notice that there are more people than I can handle on my own, so I print out some guidebooks and ask for donations. Now, I'm making enough on my donations to supply the garden with new plants.

--End analogy--

Dave, they are taking something from us bloggers and creating something that they *are* returning to the commons: the index. Our benefit is increased traffic to the weblog and a searchable database. They sell tours of their index to recover the costs.

So let's ask the question: What's wrong with Gardenorati?

Update: Dave's original RSS feed had the text above in my post. He has since edited the content. Since his original words inspired my writing, I'm leaving them in place on my post.