Technorati and CNN

Sifry’s Alerts

Technorati and CNN

A few minutes ago CNN announced that Technorati will be providing real-time analysis of the political blogosphere at next week’s Democratic National Convention. I will be on-site in CNN’s convention broadcast center, along with Mary Hodder, and I’ll be providing regular on-air commentary on what bloggers are saying about politics and the convention. And on Sunday, July 25, we’ll launch a new section of our site for political coverage: politics.technorati.com. This site will make it easy for bloggers, journalists, and anyone interested in politics to see the postings of the most linked-to political bloggers, to track the ideas with the fastest-growing buzz, and to monitor conversations in thousands of other political blogs. CNN.com will link to this site, and we’ll be updating the CNN site with the latest from the blogosphere.

Great news for us at Technorati and hats-off to CNN for taking this leap. Hopefully this will help people view blogging as a more “legitimate” source of news.

It’s interesting to note that it was CNN which broke the big 3 TV network monopoly on news editorial by feeding local TV the raw video feeds, allowing them to edit the news themselves. Similarly, CNN providing bloggers the ability to reach the public directly may have an impact on the way media edits their news.

Obviously, incentive to just be faster, isn’t better. I think we’re going to get a chance to see whether Technorati authority management and the ability for blogs to fact check and manage news will be able to provide viewers of CNN with additional insight.

UPDATE: Here’s the press release from CNN. [Joi Ito’s Web]