In a story that is sure to get the typical pile on TechCrunch broke the news today that Technorati has once again gone through a re-alignment but this time instead of wandering off into the netherworld of who knows what they have apparently returned to their roots as tool for bloggers; and those interested in just searching blogs.

Even with the pile on that is bound to happen I felt it only fair considering my past posts about the decline of the service that I take a look at what was happening to the once major force in the blogosphere. After all Technorati was the birthplace of the blogging elite A-List that has provided fodder for more than a few posts. It was the one place you could go in the beginning to see what was happening around the blogosphere; but in the light of competition from the likes of Techmeme and Google BlogSearch Technorati began flailing around trying to find relevancy and maintain its position as the leader in blog search and ranking.

Needless to say it failed miserably as more and more bloggers began to question it’s roadmap as things like WTF and Topics were introduced and the core feature of providing a ranking system for bloggers was slide to the back burner. Then came a change within the company as the new CEO Richard Jalichandra began the hard work of bringing Technorati back to the forefront as the bloggers stopping point on the web.

Well as you can tell from the graphic at the top of the post Technorati has indeed made some major changes. Primarily among them is the separation of blogs from the MSM attempts to be blogs which I personally think is one of the smartest moves they could have made. The fact is that MSM (Main Stream Media) from the moment it attaches the word blog to some staff writer’s posting they already have an unfair advantage over just about every blog out there; with maybe the exception of the new media conglomerate blog networks.

It is hard enough for the small independent blogger to make headway against blogs like TechCrunch, GigaOM or Read/WriteWeb let alone fight for readership against WSJ or the NYT. By separating the two totally different types of blogs it once again provides a more level playing field for those of us bloggers wanting to have a voice - an input - without worrying that WSJ is going to trump us every time by its shear volume of readers.

Another nice addition to the Front Page is both the Tags from what’s rising section which shows a tag cloud of what are the hottest tags being used to identify posts and conversations. The just below that they have added a new Contributing Bloggers list of what I assume are the top 5 hottest blog posts across the blogosphere.

Finally we have a useful front page for a service that many bloggers have good memories of and despaired when we saw it being diluted the way it was.

But what is even better from a bloggers point of view is the section Technorati is calling Blogger central and for me will become a regular stopping point during my daily reading. On this one page they have put together what is nothing less than an excellent dashboard of information for bloggers who want to stay on top of what is hot.

In Blogger Central you will find the top five of the following things:

• Rising links of the day
• Top blogs
• Top favorited blogs

Along with that is a graph displaying the number of blog posts mentioning the hot tags. As well is a lead-in box for blog posts that are about blogging and finally we get a list of the top four blog posts with a snippet of what is being written in them.

This one addition to the revamped Technorati in my opinion redeems the service as it shows that Technorati has indeed returned to its roots and the bloggers who made the company what it is.

Overall I think this rebirth based on the things that made Technorati one of the most popular services out there for bloggers is a successful one. My hat goes off to the team responsible for pulling this all off and a big thank you to the new CEO and his team for having the guts to backtrack the way they have but at the same time given us something even better.

This new Technorati is a big plus for the blogging world and I am glad they have returned to their roots.

Listening to: Alan Parsons Project - Eye in the Sky - Sirius (Instrumental)

Conversation Tags: Technorati, blogs, blogging