Technorati Authority Filter

Technorati has apparently snuck a new feature into use: an Authority slider, that filters out (or in) blog posts based on the authority of the author. This was reported by Robert Scoble, and commented on by many others.

Steve Rubel wonders if downsampling authority into popularity may not be in our best interests. But Michael Arrington wonders if there are any alternatives.

I went to fool with the feature, and came up with at least an example of how authority-based-on-linkcount fails the true authority test.

As has been widely reported recently, 3bubbles, a client of mine, is releasing a limited beta of their blog chat technology this week. I have been consulting with the company since October, and have been deeply involved in all the development and planning. I was one of the first two to post on the topic, along with Michael. However, unless you turn the Authority filter down to the most non-authoritative level, you don’t stumble across my post about it, although I am arguably one of the 3 or 4 leading authorities, if not THE authority, on 3bubbles, today.

This is the direct result of the current rank of /Message (which I have been chronicling in the Starting From Zero series), which is theoretically an indication of my personal authority in this matter. So there are two problems, one small and one big:

• The small one: my /Message-based authority ranking is off, significantly, because Technorati has not kept pace with the rapid growth of links to /Message. They are at least 5 or six days behind, which would shift my /Message ranking from 10K and change to something like 4,500. Note, as I have pointed out many thimes, this is a temporary issue, based on the recent start of my blog.
  
  
• The big one: Technorati does not aggregate authority across mutliple blogs. In my case, while I haven’t posted to Get Real in a month, my rank there is still around 1700. Shouldn’t my personal authority be a combination of the various blogs I am associated with? I am also blogging at Social Contract and Conferenza, so over time I will be accumulating links all over the place. And more importantly, is authority online only a function of links? Shouldn’t other factors, such as the period of time that you have been posting, have a weight?

Personally, I have argued for an open model of authority, as I discussed last year vis-a-vis RankOut. Technorati or others could expose a collection of factors — link count, number of posts tagged, number of comments, years blogging, whatever — and allow each of us to push the sliders where we want them. More interested in the perspectives of people with many links? Push that slider to 10. More interested in someone who has been posting on a topic for more than 3 years. Push that slider.

A uniform model of authority has its attractions, but is likely a hopeless oversimplification of people’s real needs in the search for authoritative sources of insight.