In Mary Hodder’s roundup of comments on the discussion of community metrics, I agree wholeheardedly with Dina Mehta. Dina says that the value of Technorati to her is conversation discovery.
For instance, I have no interest in what my ranking on Technorati is, but I do visit it daily to see who is linking to me and how they might have progressed a thought. Yet, I’m not so happy when these get transformed into lists, ratings and rankings. Are you merely well-known, or well-read?
Yes, exactly. I use Technorati to see who responded to what I wrote, to discover distributed comments. I also use Technorati to find out who’s written about something I’m interested in at the moment. Then (if I have something to say), I’ll comment on their blog or link to them. Technorati is for discovering and continuing conversation.
Link rank is a not-so-interesting byproduct.