Measuring the Blogosphere While It Was Still New

Technorati in September 2003 calls itself web services for bloggers and leads with a direct promise: find out who is linking to you. The page lists Cosmos, Watchlists, Members, Help, Inbound Links, Top 100, Recent Blogs, Newcomers, Current Events, Breaking News, Hot Links, and a bookmarklet.

The statistics are striking: more than one million weblogs watched, tens of millions of active links, and many more tracked links. The page treats blogs as a living network that can be counted, searched, ranked, and followed.

Historically, this matters because blogging was becoming too large to understand one blog at a time. Links between writers became signals of attention, reputation, argument, and discovery.

Technorati's page captures the blogosphere as both culture and measurable system. It gave bloggers a mirror: who links to me, what is hot, what is new, what is spreading. The social web was learning to watch itself.