I haven’t analyzed this in depth, but there is some stuff wrong with the new Technorati. They seem to continue having their identity crisis: what is technorati, anyway? Everytime a company launches one of these alternative homepages I think: identity crisis! Focus guys!

They did get one important thing mostly right with this new relaunch: instead of having 4 or 5 different search domains and having the user (that’s me) choose, they now try to integrate these into one search. So you don’t have to choose anymore between searching tags and text, for example. Mostly.

Their homepage (as homepages tend to do) illustrates their identity crisis: (and what’s up with that *ticker*? Jeez.)

Technorati needs to figure out if they are a search engine, a search feature, a social network or what. And most importantly, they need to show this in the UI. Right now, there’s no differentiation. They have a great brand, but what they stand for (“blog search”) gets diluted and diluted by their wavering around their features and their UI.

And why the hell is their main UI feature (the search box) hidden in that top right corner? Why do video thumbs look the same as site thumbs, so I have to read some (vertical! white on blue!) text to know the difference? I can go on, their search results display needs some loving too.

Is it my morning coffee speaking, or do you feel the same?