With the introduction this past week of tagging within the MBL (MyBlogLog) eco-system and the de-evolution of Technorati with their Live Web search initiative into a Google wannabe an interesting set of conditions is coming together which could very well see MBL become the metrics master for bloggers. A couple of conditions would have to be met first but I think this is has a very good possibility of happening.

While Technorati hypes up it’s move away from being a blogging centric search engine; and with its recent move to de-value the ranking system, MBL is introducing a possible groundwork of features that could prove to be very attractive to the blogosphere. Regardless of what Technorati may want to believe and how much a certain level of bloggerdom might deny it without that ranking in place Technorati will begin to lose a grip on the very market that made them what they are - the bloggers.

On top of this is the buzz that Technorati is in play to be bought up hence the move to try and appeal to a larger marketplace of users; after all VC money isn’t a bottomless wallet - they are going to want to see something for the millions that have been put into Technorati and probably sooner than later.

MBL on the other hand is just another division of Yahoo! so the only thing it has to really worry about is internal transfers and lay-offs. Regardless of the rebranding that Yahoo! might do MBL isn’t going anywhere which leaves it in prime position to fill in the void being left by Technorati.

With the introduction of tagging; and the searching ability that comes along with that, and their already existing stats package MBL has two of three must haves for bloggers. The remaining thing needed? … ranking. Now before you go all ballistic on me over this and start going on about how bloggers don’t care about rankings let me head you of at the pass with a simple word - bullshit.

Ya the blogging purity patrol are sure to espouse this idyllic viewpoint of blogging but in reality 99.99999999% of tech bloggers do give a damn about their Technorati ranking because for the majority that is a part of how their ad dollar worth is calculated. Not to mention personal ego and bragging rights. Sure the upper echelon of the tech blogging world will look down in disdain and say I’m just a whiner but unlike the rest of the real blogging world who have to work hard to grow their blogs they came into the game with a name and in some cases a massive advertising dollar value.

I once wrote a toss off comment on Scoble’s blogs which basically asked if the A-List would exist without Technorati. Well that time maybe coming a lot sooner than we think and I am sure that the bloggers who understand the importance of the ranking in calculating the dollar worth of their hard work are wondering what to do.

I said earlier that MBL would have a couple of issues that would have to be dealt with before tech bloggers would begin truly evangelizing them as a Technorati alternative. The first one is service. One of the biggest issues that users of MBL have had; especially big sites like TechCrunch, is that the MBL widget is dragging down their page loading time. So it is imperative that MBL address this issue before anything else and maybe with the announcement by the MBL team that this is part of their planned revamp coming soon this problem is being addressed.

The second thing they need to do is come up with an easy to use and implement ranking metric and if they really want to add value include a Yahoo! ad network account. If MBL can tie all this together and make it an easy upgrade in service for their current user base then they could have a winning service on their hands. The bloggers would be winners and Yahoo! would be able to realize a nice ROI on their purchase.

And Technorati?

It’s losing its luster more and more as each day goes by.

Conversation Tags: MyBlogLog, Yahoo!, Technorati