New York Times Goofs on Technorati Management?

Today's NY Times tagged Peter Hirshberg as the CEO of Technorati, which is either an announcement wiating to happen or a goof. Peter is the chairman of the company, according to their website. Dave Sifry is still CEO, isn't he?

Kind of bizarre for the NY Times to refer to Technorati as "a new service" when it's been around for years.

tags: technorati, peter+hirshberg, dave+sifry, new+york+times, blogosphere

Comments

[David Sifry]

Yeah, it is a goof. Here's a list of the factual errors in that article:

1) It states that Peter Hirshberg is Technorati's Chief Executive. We really love Peter, but he's not the CEO, he's our Chairman.

2) It states that Edelman "is sponsoring development of new Technorati sites in French, German, Italian, Korean and Chinese, involving an investment of 'several hundred thousand dollars.'" That is technically correct, but it makes the implication that Edelman has invested in Technorati, which is untrue. A much clearer word choice would have been "payment" rather than "investment" in the aforementioned sentence.

3) It states that there are "more than 55 million of them [blogs] around the world, according to Technorati, and the total is growing by thousands every week." Again, that's technically true, but why not be more accurate? There are actually 57.2 million blogs that Technorati is tracking as of the time of the writing of this post, and those numbers are growing by over 175,000 each day, which means that on average, there are at least 1.2 Million blogs created each week. These figures were detailed in my most recent State of the Blogosphere report.

Dave

[Scott]

I don't think it's so odd that they refer to it as a new service. "Old" media types do this all the time so their readers/viewers won't feel like idiots because they've never heard of this. Even Leo Laporte in a recent KFI episode discussing YouTube made the disclaimer that his listeners might not know what it is because it's only been around for about a year (note that this program is aimed pretty much at "non-sophisticated" tech users).

People still act like the internet and the way people use it are new and have to be explained as though the internet is still in development or something instead of acting like it is what it is, a part of the lives of a majority of people in the country.

[Stowe Boyd]

Dave - Thanks for the clarification.

Scott - Yes, they are slow on the take-up.

[Dennis Howlett]

You want to live in my world. The leading online publication has finally added RSS feeds but hasn't bothered to announce the fact or educate its readership on their use. Kind of says it all if you believ e they reflect their readership's state of readiness (for anything.)

[Chris Heuer]

Further point of correction to David's comment - all the other announcements from Technorati and Edelamn refer to this as a Joint Venture - not a work for hire that would equate it to a 'payment'.