In the ever growing world of "You Decide," I am excited by Technorati's new feature "Where's the Fire." What is WTF? Since "I get to decide" I believe it's the leveling of the blog playing field so that everyone with valuable content and insights can be found and, heard. The Power Law gets pushed to the curb and intelligent inputs rather than mass outputs rule the day. Technorati is introducing a framework - IMHO - that gives the quirky idiosyncratic voices online a position of prominence in blog search results and not because someone or some commercial blog has achieved some type of distribution status but rather a status recognition that is based on a community identifying quality content. Content quality that you and I decide has or has not achieved a level of excellence.Â

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Over time, Technorati's WTF community ratings will likely give everyone the opportunity to be a member of the blog "A list." Think of it as 15 minutes of fame for excellence that can last a lot longer than 15 minutes. I believe WTF is a framework that rewards excellent content that is viewed as excellent by those who view and vote.Â

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It's a great step forward.

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So, where will this new step forward take us? I think WTF is a signifier of content but also of brand. Brand strategy will have to address the great divide that might result from negative complaints and comments and positive passive posts that lack urgency or importance. So, I expect to see more firms making the leap to blogging just from the standpoint of brand continuity. Remember, the commercial voice isn't being blocked theyll just need to do a better job of implementing customer-facing strategies.

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What else? Well, why shouldn't a wiki page be a "Where's the Fire" for a topic of discussion?  This is the best example of "group voice" that there is.  Perhaps a best-of WTF encyclopedia will be created each year by Technorati similar to Google Zeitgeist? Archival is critical and can lead to products like a Way Back Machine for blog WTFs. Even from the standpoint of social influence and word of mouth marketing lots of opportunities. Maybe, just maybe, social media is about to take off and thousands of individuals will now not only start a blog but also have a voice that will be heard.

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Honestly, I've been frustrated by the real lack of meaningful metrics around what is defined as valuable content in the blog space, and while you may disagree, I believe the individual voice has been excluded from consideration in most cases, in large part, due to the fact that regular individuals don't post frequently enough to get great distribution.Â

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The other value that Technorati is bringing to the table - and what I really love about WTF is the shift away from distribution to consumption. Â

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MSN take note. I believe there is the pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow and if MSN can get their arms around this quickly I believe they have a great shot of competing in the organic search engine space as well as providing new services and generating new search-related revenue streams.   Do you think Google will do a WTF's for paid-search? Hell yes!

So, wheres the fire?

TAGS: Technorati, WTF, Wheres the Fire, Power Law, Google, MSN, WayBack Machine, Word of Mouth Marketing