With a new Top 100 and editorial content

Oct 14, 2009 12:23 GMT  ·  By

Technorati, once one of the hottest and most valuable proprieties in blogging, has been falling somewhat into obscurity for the past couple of years. But after several misguided changes and new products it's now set to come back with a fresh new look and a couple of new tricks up its sleeve, not to mention a slightly bigger wallet.

The company has managed to raise $2 million in funding in what it claims is an extension of the fourth round of funding dating back to June 2008. Back then the company had raised $7.5 million at a $35 million valuation. The latest sum brings the total amount raised to a little over $32 million in the past five years or so. The money is expected to last Technorati until it can reach profitability, which is expected to be sometime soon, with revenue doubling every year for the past two years according to the company.

With the additional funding secured, Technorati is now launching a revamped design, which is more in line with the site's current goals. The biggest new feature is the possibility for third-party bloggers to post their content on Technorati in the hopes of gaining more exposure. In fact, the site is taking a decisive move towards original and editorial content on top of the search and ranking services it still offers.

The other big change is the new Top 100 Blogs, which got some major changes to the ranking system and is also now split in several categories. Previously the top 100 blogs got their “authority” based on the number of links on other blogs over the previous six months. This means that the top was fairly static so the new system is based on several different factors like how often the blogs are updated, context and linking behavior. The company hopes this will make the top more dynamic and more valuable to the users. The search has also been updated to correlate with the new authority system.