I’ll direct you to a followup blog post from Niall Kennedy: Whose voice is it anyway? that explains things a little more clearly. As well, full props to David Sifry for commenting on my post last night about the issues with some Technorati searches.
The larger issue for someone like me, who has been involved with the web professionally for over ten years now and has seen all kinds of companies come and go, is that at this point in history we are starting to see sites and products that are really bringing the real promise of the web to fruition. In my experience, though, it’s not enough just to have a decent product – the company behind the product has to be one that inspires confidence, both in terms of its treatment of users and the way it handles itself in the public sphere more generally. Following the dot-com crash, many of us veterans were left crossing our fingers with each new thing that not only would the new products be worthwhile but that the companies would resist some of the baser urges and really develop along lines that would privilege user experiences and foster a ‘human’ identity among corporate giants.
For now, success in this area is defined by companies like Ludicorp, Six Apart, and clearly Technorati belongs in that group as well. But with each of these we are still left hoping that the confidence we give them will be repaid. And it’s not an abstract desire – there is a fundamental difference between companies like those and, say, Blogger, who entered the warm embrace of Google and lost all personality. At one point, Blogger had faces and names – now it’s difficult to find out the name of a single person who works there and what their credentials are. So it’s much more difficult to have confidence that the company is going to do the right thing, is going to continue to innovate in ways that give priority to the the rights, desires, and preferences of real people and not just their corporate masters. Those two urges are supposed to be coincident – but all too often they are not.
