Investments and perceptions

When I look up Technorati on Technorati today, the top results (e.g. Michael Fioritto, paidContent, Om Malik, and John Battelle) carry news that we've received venture funding. Some of you may wonder why we generally don't bother talking about investment stuff. Isn't it news, after all?

Making a big deal about VC investments is unnecessary, it seems to me. One of the biggest reasons for the dot-com crash was an imbalance of attention: far too much on investments, and far too little on building real businesses with those investments. In a sane and sober business environment, the proper ratio should be completely customer-focused.

In our case, we're putting our investments to work building infrastructure and providing service to a population that's growing at an explosive rate. Frankly, we'd rather talk about that than about the money others have invested in us. Right now our staff is just thirteen people, all sprinting a marathon. As you probably know, our struggles have been no secret. My last two posts were about those problems and what we've done to get past them. We'll have more problems, I'm sure. (Esther Dyson says "Always make new mistakes.") But I also think we've made good progress, especially considering the steepness of the hill we've chosen to climb.

Perception is often a trailing indicator. That's how I regard remarks like Michael Fioritto's "Maybe now the site will start working, for a change..." That change came several weeks ago. Technorati's performance is far from ideal; but it is improving. Please keep banging on it and let us know how we're doing and what we can do better. That's the kind of investment that helps the most.

Out of the fire, into the frying pan

Well, it certainly has been an incredible past 3 weeks. It's almost hard to believe, but it has only been 20 days since we got the initial call from CNN, and the entire team here has been through a firedrill the likes of which I've never seen. In three short weeks, we had to completely revamp and fix a number of core scalability issues with the Technorati service as well as roll out a new site redesign ahead of schedule, not to mention the new politics site as well. I'm amazed that we weathered the storm. Site traffic grew by 8x to 10x over or previous levels, the site is now valid XHTML 1.0, is completely CSS driven, more cross-browser friendly, and we added 60 more servers to handle the increased database demand. We now have far fewer single points of failure, which will allow the service to grow more smoothly in the future.

Unfortunately, we also broke a bunch of things. First off, user logins got broken when we switched to a new load-balanced front-end system. This new system allows us to put as many web servers out there as we wanted, but in the rush, we broke the code that performed user sessions - which meant that user logins don't work correctly. We put in a new caching subsystem which wasn't fully tested, and sometimes service results went awry. Weblog claims aren't working right for a small segment of our members, a nagging problem that we've got to get working as well. And worst of all, email watchlists for some of our paying subscribers have been broken, and we haven't been on the ball in fixing it.

I apologize.

For as much progress that we've made in the last few weeks and months, with all the increased visibility and traffic, we've been so focused on the trees, that we've lost sight of the forest - which are you guys, the bloggers and users of the service. We've gotten offtrack, thinking about new features and enhancements before handling and fixing the known issues we already had (gosh darn it, there are so many cool features to do). We lost sight of the fact that we're here to be of service to you.

There's no good excuse for that.

All I can say is that we're committed to fixing the issues, and to building a rock-solid infrastructure and bug-free service. The first thing we're doing is fixing the session/login issues, so those of you who weren't able to log in will be able to log in. Responsiveness and customer support is also a top priority.

Over the last few days, I've gotten a lot of email and pointers to blog entries that commented on the service - both successes and frustrations. Thanks for the criticism and feedback. Some of it was brutal, but that's the best kind - the stuff that hits closest to the heart. Like how we were being unresponsive. That's just unacceptable. And we're going to fix that. We're taking this week to go back and take a serious look at what we did right, what we did wrong, and how we can better serve all of you going forward. Thanks again for using Technorati, and for all of the time, attention, and feedback. We're committed to making things right, and providing a great service to all of you.

Gotta love screwups

Ah, you gotta love it when the technology bites you in the ass. The previous post was a draft of my CNN wrap-up, with all of my screw-ups, typos, and bad edits. Goes to show me for using my weblogging software to write up these posts. One missed click, and what you write is up and out there. Such is how the sausage is made.

Things are really crazy at the convention. There's a lot going on, all at the same time, and up here in blogger's alley, we've got the loudspeakers pointing right at us, and crowds cheering, waving signs, and just being generally raucus. Even the lousy dancing during the breaks. I looked over and commented to some of the folks here about the need for a "7th Inning stretch" - and then it hit me - that's what the dancing is for. But I sure wish they didn't televise it, it's painful. :-)

Day 3 wrap-up, 7/28

Here's some highlights, from both inside and outside the FleetCenter.

Working our way through the evening:

• Kucinich's bold anti-war stance: His speech got him grasroots credibility among the liberal bloggers. Zoe VanderWolk wrote, "Why has Kucinich been stuck holding the bag? Why isn't anyone else talking about Iraq? The reaction to his condemnation of the war has been overwhelmingly positive, and according to a delegate from NC I talked to the Kucinich delegates have been treated 'like kings'."
• Jesse Jackson: Both liberals and conservatives weighed in on Jackson's speech, and the overall reaction was negative. Jesse Taylor of Pandagon opined, "Jesse Jackson's onstage now...and not really impressing. He just came off a Wyclef Jean performance, and the speech is just...weird. The more inflammatory elements of the Democratic Party are not coming off well in this new "hope springs eternal" message group."
• More on Obama-mania:Positive reports keep coming in on Barack Obana, soon-to-be-senator from Illinois. David Weinberger: "The good news for Hillary is that she might get State Department when Obama is President in 2012.". Thomas F. Schaller at Gadflyer marked this as a turning point: "That said, at some future point we will realize that last night marks the point where Obama eclipsed Jackson as the standard-bearing voice of black Democrats. Sorry, Jesse: That unofficial title has finally been passed to a new generation."
• Al Sharpton: Sharpton proves again that he is a masterful speaker. Dave Winer wrote in an email, "Sharpton was inspiring, had the crowd on its feet 18 times. A soul revival. Killer speech." Dave Johnson had sympathies for the man to follow Sharpton: " Who did Bob Graham piss off, that he has to follow Al Sharpton?" Other liberals were not as kind, and saw hypocracy in Sharpton's speech: "I just heard Al Sharpton address the convention and I was rather astounded by the glorious reception he received. 'Our vote is not for sale,' he thundered. This from the man who leased his entire campaign consultant named Roger Stone. The only line missing from Sharpton's speech: 'I have a scheme.'", wrote Marc Cooper.
• Best delegate blogging from the floor award: Goes to 19-year old Karl-Thomas Musselman, the youngest delegate from Texas. His reporting on Kucinich's, Sharpton's and Graham's speeches were refreshing and showed his excitement at being on the floor, but be sure to read his earlier entires revealing more behind-the-scenes of a delegate's life.
• John Edwards: Personally, I wan't terribly impressed by Edwards' speech tonight. Perhaps it is because he has laryngitis, or because he was tired, but his oratory didn't live up to admittedly high expectations. Others differed in their views. Dave Pell at Electablog wrote, "Edwards owned the crowd and the night and delivered just what this pundit ordered. A healthy infusion of the two Americas speech that rings so clearly true to the ears of any who open their eyes to see. ". And Alan at The Command Post weighed in: "The fanfare for Edwards is genuine adulation … the star appeal is palpable, and the crowd won’t let him go. Whatever happens in this election cycle … the next time Edwards runs in the Democratic primaries, he’s not finishing second." On a more humorous note, he added, "Thank Fod He Didn't Dance ... He didn’t try to do that stupid little on-stage dance that white politicians always try to do."
• Blogs on Media on Blogs: First off, a great post on what blogging the convention is like from Visicalc author Dan Bricklin. Wired News' Adam L. Penenberg covers the eclectic mix of reporting going on from the convention floor. David Weinberger takes the media to task as well. His takeaway? "Objectivity is a form of rhetoric."

Media Frenzy

Man, there's a lot of media here right now. I've just spoken with folks from The Nation, and I've got a team from PBS looking over my shoulder - "Hey, can I get you blogging right now?" Just had a few of the journalists present yell into the blogger group, asking, "Hey, does anyone know Kerry's Secret Service codename?" Through the looking glass.

I'm showing Terence Smith how to post to a blog

Terence Smith, the classy reporter from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and showing him how easy it is to set up and write a weblog.

Terence actually writes a mini-blog of his own, which he just showed me. Great!

I'm here with the folks from PBS' NewsHour

They just did a segment with me on blogging, and the impact it is having on the political conversation. Unfortunately, the speeches were going on at the same time, so I'm not sure how good the sound quality was, and we had to stop several times, but overall the interview went well. It should be on tomorrow night's NewsHour, which is on at 3PM PST if you're out on the west coast. Of course, this is TV, so who knows if it'll actually air, but I'm hoping it can get in. Either way, it was fun to meet the folks and do the interview. Spreading the gospel, spreading the gospel.

DNC Wrap-up, 7/27

Welcome to day 3 of the DNC, blogger-style.

First off, a roundup of the best (and worst) coverage of webloggers in the mainstream media: Note - I'm going to leave off weblogs penned by pros, like the excellent CNN weblog (nbote: I'm here at the DNC helping CNN make sense of the blogosphere). Wired News' Adam L. Penenberg covers the eclectic mix of reporting going on from the convention floor.

Many webloggers also were on the nightly news programs, and posted

Talking with Clifford Pugh at the Houston Chronicle

I'm showing Clifford how to post to a blog. I'm using w.blogger as my blogging tool.

Weblog wrap-up, 7/26

Thirty five influential webloggers were officially credentialed by the Democratic National Convention, including Dave Winer, Jay Rosen, Christian Crumlish (also blogging here), David Weinberger, Atrios, and Jeralyn Merritt. Here's some highlights from inside and outside the convention:

• The Gore Speech: Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.com posted the text of Al Gore's speech before he gave it. This was important not because it was such a great speech, but because it lifted back the curtain on yet one more aspect of the political journalistic process. Journalists have always had advance texts of major speeches handed to them, and if you watch closely at some presidential addresses, you'll see members of Congress flipping through the written text as it's being given. Now, thanks to a blogger, the public is in on the real deal.
• Who says Rebublican webloggers don't have a sense of humor?: A number of webloggers made fun of John Kerry's recent trip to Kennedy Space Center - probably the most creative use of photo editing software goes to Blogs for BushShove it?: Conservative webloggers were also abuzz about Teresa Heinz Kerry's recent "Shove It" comment made to a reporter at an event yesterday, but it hasn't picked up a critical mass, as only 307 posts were made about it today, out of over 275,000 weblog posts total for the day - over 10,000 per hour.
• The "new new" convention: Jay Rosen, NYU journalism prof, again proved why he has such a following online: Rosen digs deeply into the odd journalistic trope of constantly referring to conventions past, arguing that the only way most reporters can make meaning of an event that has been emptied of most of its spontaneity by scripting and pre-determined outsomes is by relating it to the olden days when conventions really made news. But then he helps explain why it was that for so many journalists the "blogging phenomenon" was a story in itself to cover. The superficial answer, he says, is that this is only of the only "new" things happening here, at least worth a "nice sidebar." But then Rosen adds: But I think there's a different and deeper answer. Over their heads the arrow points forward. "Blogging represents--at least for purposes of the convention--what things are becoming. "The conventions have become..." is a tired story line. And that is one reason we bloggers ate breakfast today under the curious gaze of the press."
• Henry Waxman and Howard DeanTwo politicians who went out of their way to pass a message to the Convention Credentialed webloggers are Congressman Henry Waxman and Governor Howard Dean, who both invited webloggers to special morning breakfasts this morning. Matt Stoller has a good report on Waxman's views, and Howard Dean arrived to talk about the effect of weblogs on his campaign. Pandragon reports.
• Cameraphone CoverageLeave it to 6 smart USC students and their professor to take a technology to a new level. They're walking the convention floor with cameraphones, taking instant snapshots along with commentary and posting the information live, at the instant it happens. The Wireless Election Connection Moblog (a moblog is short for "mobile weblog") looks to be one of the surprise hits of the weblog coverage here at the convention.
• A libertarian weighs in: Libertarian blogger Matt Welch, who writes for Reason magazine, gives an thought-provoking round-up on the first night. He writes "The biggest applause lines tonight came when Jimmy Carter and Al Gore slowed down their delivery, ratcheted up the southern growl, and condemned the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq."