Today, when I checked Technorati, I noticed some changes.

Some terms changed
“Incoming links” are now called “Authority”, those who favorite your blog are called your “Fans” and blogs posts linking to your blog posts fall under “blog reactions”. I’m not sure yet what they try to do gain with the term changes. Gary’s guess is that ‘using the word “Authority” makes it easier for people to differentiate between Google and Technorati when talking about backlinks now’.

Design changes
Previously, when you searched for a blog in their blog directory, the information of that blog would be displayed in approximately the same way they are, when you searched for the blog in blog posts. Now this view is changed. On a page headed by a title like “Everything in the known universe about Rehuel punt kom | Writings of a web developer” you can see most information of the particular blog at a glance.

Check out the results of a search for my blog in the blog directory, while the result of a search in blog posts still looks the same.

Conclusion
I have the feeling Technorati listened to those bloggers who mentioned that the Top 100 Favorited list is actually useless, and are changing the system. While doing this they cleverly hide te major changes in smaller changes to the design and terminology AND they give users a chance to get used to the new terms that will be used in the new system.

This is just a guess. I also think we can expect more changes to the design of Technorati in the very near future.

Update: As I hit submit to post the article, I see a similar article by Maki pop up in my feed reader. The main difference is that he noticed that the WTF voting is more “Web 2.0″ as he puts it.

Book
For people who are new to Internet marketing, Street Smart Internet Marketing – Tips, Tools, Tactics & Techniques to Market Your Product, Service, Business or Ideas Online seems to be a good book.