missing? washington post's technorati supplied "who's blogging"

<I started a post about social bookmarking but ended up writing about the apparent disappearance of technorati from the Washington Post's article pages - jump down to normal text for the WP stuff>

I'm a big fan of social bookmarking and recommendation tools, in particular del.icio.us, so am pleased to see links to them on news and media company websites as this could help drive new users to these tools and help take them mainstream.

One trend I have noticed amongst mainstream media sites in the UK is that the ones linking to such services (BBC Blogs, Telegraph BlogsThe Daily Mail ) all link to the same five social bookmarking services: del.icio.us, Digg, Newsvine, NowPublic and Reddit.

On the other side of the Atlantic, The Washington Post links to del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit but also adds Google, Yahoo! and Facebook to the mix.

Whilst visiting to see who the Washington Post was linking to, I noticed that the "who's blogging" feature provided by Technorati (see screenshot) now seems to be missing from the Washington Post's pages. I might be wrong on this, but half an hour of looking at page after page from the last week or so didn't turn up any sign of technorati supplied links.

I've often used the Washington Post as an example during presentations on how mainstream media organisations can bring the voices and opinions of bloggers into their article pages. It would be a real shame if they've now stopped using this feature.

The incorporation of links provided by Technorati into Washington Post articles was announced back in September 2005, with some bloggers worrying that it would soon be targeted by splogs (spam blogs).

My understanding, having spoken with Dave Sifry about the nuts and bolts of the system at Le Web 3 last December, was that the links that appeared in the page were moderated and/or came from white-listed blogs before appearing.

The most recent article I was able to find on the Washington Post carrying the "who's blogging" feature was from the 8th of August, nearly one week ago (the WP blogs still carry a Technorati link at the bottom of new posts).

Am I just not looking in the right place? Has the deal come to an end? Are there problems with the technology or editorial reasons behind the disappearance of this feature? I dropped Rob Curley an email this morning asking if he could tell us more but if any readers happen to have some insight please feel free to comment.

 

Comments

[damozel]

As a new (3 month old) political blog, we REVERED WaPo for giving recognition to bloggers who cited or quoted its articles and wondered when other sources would catch on.

Looks like they've given it up. Maybe they reckon it draws people away from their stuff. Short-sighted, if so. We normally always cited one or more WaPo articles and used it as our primary reference. I'm glad somebody noticed this---will be checking back to see.

[Robin Hamman]

Hi Damozel,
I also liked the feature and often linked to the Washington Post rather than other US News websites containing the same or similar stories because the link back helped me feel that they valued my link.

I also thought it was a good way of enabling audiences to easily find opinions posted elsewhere.

I really hope it's just a temporary disappearance...

Robin.

[Carter]

As of September 13th, the Harold Meyerson column still featured a "who's blogging" box.

[Robin Hamman]

Yes, I've noticed that the feature appears to have come back. I guess they were just working on it...

:-)
Robin.