Blog discovery

Search as we know it seems to be pretty much a thing for a selected few. Google dominates internet search (with yahoo and msn catching up), while blog search is getting perfected by companies like technorati &co. The entry costs for creating a new search engine from the ground up is increasingly putting a halt to new ventures within that segment. The Brrreeeport test conducted by Robert Scoble gives good indications on the situation as it is now, with Google having a clear lead (both in scope and speed).

So, now that raw search seems to be perfected with a couple of contenders in that segment, I’d like to see more innovations on the discovery side of search. More specifically, on blog discovery. Bloglines, which I’ve used for a couple of years, has a “Recommended feeds” feature, yet I’ve never gotten a recommendation from them. I subscribe to around 50-75 different feeds, so based on those they (or anyone to whom I upload my OPML export) pretty much have a full profile of my interests. This shouldn’t be too much to ask for, yet I haven’t stumbled on a decent blog discovery tool. It’s probably time to switch aggregator..

Something else worthwhile in blog discovery would be in cross-referencing topics with the timestamps of the posts. For example, it would be interesting to be able to see back in time, and checking out who has been crossing paths with their toughts. Think about time-scrollable tag clouds that can be compared. I’d digg that.

Tags: Brrreeeport