#14 Getting Not-So-Technical with Technorati

So now that you’ve been blogging for awhile, you might be wondering just how big the blogosphere is. Well, according to Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs, the number of blogs doubles just about every 6 months with over 111 million blogs currently being tracked by the site.

Yes, these numbers are astounding, but as you’ve already seen for yourselves, blogging is so easy that these publishing tools are being taken advantage of by almost every industry, including libraries.

So how does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? The answer to the first question is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you're already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool. But if you want to join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you’ll need to claim your blog yourself. As for tagging posts with Technorati tags? This is easy, too. All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post (see Discover More, below) and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.

Technorati offers a wide range of features. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries). You can also use Technorati to keep track of your favorite blogs, once you sign up for a free account.

Discovery Resources

• Technorati Tour – videocast of features
• Technorati Site Guide – frequently asked questions about blogs, searching Technorati, the Technorati Blog Directory, tags, Favorites, and Topics
• See what’s Popular at Technorati
• PLCMC's podcast about Technorati
  

Discovery Exercise

• Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in blog posts, in tags, and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
• Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
• Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.

Discover More
If you're up for a challenge, learn how to tag your posts by with Technorati tags so they can join tag searches. Create a post about something. It can be anything you want and add the HTML code to the bottom to tag it as “LPLS” (see example below). You may also want to consider claiming your blog and creating a watchlist, or adding your blog to the directory (if you don't want to register for a Technorati account).

NOTE: When adding HTML code, you'll want to make sure you're in Blogger's Edit HTML window.

LPLS

#9 Finding Feeds

Now that you have a newsreader (your Bloglines account), you can begin adding other newsfeeds that interest you. There are several ways you can locate newsfeeds.

Discovery Resources:

• When visiting your favorite websites -- look for news feed icons that indicate the website provides it. Often a feed icon will be displayed somewhere in the navigation bar of the site. (Here's an image that contains a sampling of several feed icons).
  
  
• Use Blogline's Search tool - Bloglines search tool lets you search for news feeds in addition to posts, citations and the web. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds you might be interested in.
  
  
• Other Search tools that can help you find feeds:
• Feedster - One of the largest collections of RSS feeds, Feedster lets you search for feeds in three categories: news, blogs & podcasts
• Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.
• Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
• Technorati - Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic specific blogs you may be interested in.
  Additonal Resource: Technorati Tutorial on finding and adding your blog.
  

Discovery Excercise:

1. Explore some of the search tools noted above that can help you locate some news feeds. See if you can locate some that are library-related.
2. Create a blog post about your experience. Don't know what to blog about? Here some questions to think about:
   Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?
   Which Search tool was the easiest for you?
   Which was more confusing?
   What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels?
   Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?
   What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

Note: The image shown at the beginning of this post is the standard icon that should be used among websites and browsers to identify RSS feed availability. So far, this icon has been adopted by many websites and browsers, including Firefox, where it displays in the address bar. In Internet Explorer 7, there is an RSS icon on the toolbar. When a website offers RSS, this icon will appear; otherwise it is grayed out.