Actually I knew about this before Technorati’s SuperBowl ad, but it had to sit in my queue for a while. Blogging search engine Technorati is allowing users to give their own slants on hot topics with a new feature called WTF. Ostensibly this stands for “Where’s the Fire.” Uh-huh. Anyway, you can check it out at http://www.technorati.com/wtf/ .
It’s an interesting idea; instead of yet another tagging feature or another “claim your URL” filters, users are invited to submit explanations of searched for topics, or relevant link lists. When I looked at the feature there were a few blurbs available for Prince’s performance at the SuperBowl, YouTube, and Windows Vista.
What was actually submitted varied a lot; the Windows Vista blurbs, for example, ranged from link lists to single pointers at useful articles to brief discussions of what Vista is to a slap against Bill Gates. If you have a Technorati account you can vote for the WTF blurbs that you find the most interesting/useful. In case you don’t find ANYTHING interesting or useful, you can also view full Technorati search results for that particular topic.
If you want to write a WTF blurb, you’ll have to be a registered Technorati user. This seems like an interesting idea assuming the spammers don’t get hold of it, and some kind of consensus works out as to basic infrastructure of a blurb — is it a non partial overview, a set of related resources, an opinion, or all of the above. I’d just like to have some idea of what to expect….
Categories: News