Technorati, Inc.

Technorati was a real-time search engine dedicated to the blogosphere, founded by Dave Sifry in 2002. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company provided a platform for searching and following blogs, which was a significant development in the early days of web content. Sifry, an entrepreneur and technologist, created Technorati to track the rapidly expanding world of blogs, offering tools for bloggers such as blogrolls and claiming services.

The core service was its real-time index of weblogs, which allowed users to see what was being said on blogs at any given moment. At its peak, Technorati was a primary authority for ranking blogs by influence, using its "Authority" score, which was based on the number of unique blogs linking to a specific blog. The company generated revenue primarily through its advertising network, Technorati Media, which connected advertisers with a large network of independent blogs and websites, reaching over 200 million unique visitors per month at one point.

In 2006, Technorati received a significant investment from August Capital. Over time, as the online media landscape evolved with the rise of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, the relevance of blog-specific search engines declined. In 2014, its blog directory and search engine were shut down. The company was later acquired in 2016 by Synacor, a technology and services company, for $3 million, primarily for its advertising business.

Keywords: blog search engine, weblog index, real-time search, Dave Sifry, blogosphere, online advertising, digital media, authority ranking, web 2.0, content discovery