Housing woes, tighter credit, and a softer labor market should douse it

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Blog search engine Technorati’s founding CEO is gone, its traffic party has ended and its core search functionality is under long term fire from competitors like Google Blog Search, Ask.com and Sphere (among others). Constant strategic shifts haven’t helped much either.

But Technorati still has one stronghold left - it controls the definitive, editorially unbiased list of top blogs. The list is based on unique incoming blog links over the previous six months. More links = a higher position on the list. To get a top 100 spot, a blog currently needs about 3,700 unique links.

But links from other blogs may no longer be the best indicator of the popularity of a blog, particularly today when blog links can be obtained by simply opening up the checkbook and paying. Also, Technorati clearly counts spam and other blogs, which can have a significant impact on rankings.

That’s a statement that will be hotly debated. But tomorrow bloggers will have a new top 100 list to aim for - the Techmeme Leaderboard.

The list will be created based on the blogs that created the most headlines on Techmeme over the previous thirty days (so it will change frequently).

TechMeme has become the definitive site for tech blogging news, and its sister sites Memeorandum (political news), WeSmirch (celebrity gossip) and BallBug (baseball news) hold a similar esteem in their markets. It’s about time founder Gabe Rivera started to release some of the great statistical data he’s been collecting since launching the original site in 2005.

To be exact, top blogs will be ranked on presence - “the percentage of headline space a source occupies over the 30-day period.” Discussion links are not taken into consideration - only full headlines are counted.

I think this is a much better way of ranking the very top blogs than the Technorati approach. Technorati has deep flaws, for reasons stated above. Techmeme, by contrast, has zero spam and tends to mirror what the tech blogosphere is writing about perfectly.

I am somewhat biased, however, as TechCrunch is currently in the no. 1 spot, whereas Technorati only ranks it no. 4. Also, our sister site CrunchGear is ranked no. 28 on the Techmeme Leaderboard list.

Look for this sometime tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll see leaderboards for the other Techmeme sites soon, too. Until then, check out the screen shot above, which only includes the top 30 blogs. Click for a larger view.

So what do you think is the better way of ranking blogs - Technorati or Techmeme’s approach? Or do you have a better idea? (don’t tell us, just build it)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

The list of companies offering free, Web-based word processors just got longer. Today, Adobe is entering the Webtop game (watch out, Microsoft Office) with its announcement that it will purchase Boston-based startup Virtual Ubiquity, the company behind Buzzword. Terms were not disclosed, but Adobe had previously invested in the startup through its $100 million venture fund. Adobe’s new browser-based word processor (Buzzword is currently in open beta) joins a crowded field that already includes Google Docs, Zoho Writer, Glide Write, ajaxWrite, ThinkFree, and . . . well, you get the picture.

But all that competition is not deterring Adobe. “The current Web 2.0 apps leave a lot to be desired,” sniffs Adobe product manager Erik Larson. “They do not live up to desktop apps.” Neither yet does Buzzword. But it does take several new steps toward closing that gap. Built on Adobe’s Flex development platform (which takes advantage of the ubiquitous Flash player), it’s fonts and typography easily match the fidelity of Microsoft Word. (Altough you don’t get as wide a choice of fonts right now in the beta, Adobe should be able to fix that). An Adobe AIR version that will operate offline is also in the works for sometime next year. (Google Docs will have similar offline capabilities when it is integrated with Google Gears, while Zoho has already done so).

“This is not an HTML editor,” points out Rick Treitman, Virtual Ubiquity’s CEO and a former exec at Lotus. “It is the first paginating editor that lives on the web. It is laying out the page and figuring out line breaks.” Buzzword also lets you insert tables and images, see every historical revision of a document, and share it with others. You can invite others to read it, to leave comments, or to edit the document. And, yes, it does have spell-check.

Buzzword’s drawbacks are that it is still slower than a full-fledged desktop application (not so much when typing, but when doing things like cutting and pasting); it doesn’t support hyperlinks (unconscionable for a Web-based app, though this is on Treitman’s to-do list); and there is no easy way to export a document to a blog or other Web publishing system other than cut-and-paste.

Soon, though, Buzzword will be integrated with another Adobe service launched in limited beta today called Adobe Share. This is a file-sharing app that is geared towards document sharing. You get one gigabyte of storage free and you can embed a Flash preview of your documents into any Web page, from which anyone can download and print a PDF (think Scribd or DocStoc on steroids).

The worlds of the desktop and the Web are becoming more interchangeable every day. Now, if only Adobe could figure out how to turn those documents into actual Web pages, we wouldn’t have to mess with workarounds like embedded documents.

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Bay Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners have teamed up with Salesforce to invest $25 million in businesses building on the recently announced Force.com application platform over the next three years. Investments will be around $500,000 each (some convertible notes). However, others may go as high as $2 million depending on the company’s stage and needs. The investments are a boon to the evolving Force platform and sure to lessen the appeal for a host of other database-driven application platforms.

The partnership will provide Bay and Bessemer early leads to new companies and Saleforce’s assistance during due dillegence. Bay and Bessemer were attracted to the platform due to Salesforce’s existing 35,000 customer base and 50,000 developers. Force.com already has 350 partners with 725 applications as well.

Bay looks to be taking the lead in the program and will be leveraging their significant experience SaaS investments. They have already invested in many Appexchange integrated companies (Xactly, Eloqua, Cornerstone, eProject) and are looking to get in earlier this time around. Notably, Bay has also invested in Facebook’s platform by setting aside funds for 50 investments (they’ve closed three).

The investment program has been underway over the past couple of months. Bay has been looking at 12 deals and already committed to one. The deals are judged on a case by case basis. Although, they will be looking for fully developed products, with strong metrics (revenue, customer stickiness).

The Force.com venture program is being led by Neil Sadaranganey and Salil Deshpande from Bay Parntners and Byron Deeter from Bessember Venture Partners. Companies interesting in learning more about the program can send inquires to saas@baypartners.com.

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