Technorati? WTF?
WTF stands for “Where’s The Fire,” according to Technorati. Apparently, Technorati is going the way of DIGG, and letting users decide what gets top result in Technorati searches.
Ever wonder why something is sooooo popular? Why are the hot topics hot? WTFs explain the buzz around people, things, and events. Who writes these WTFs? You do! Anyone can write one on any topic, and everyone can vote for the best explanations. The ones with the most votes rise up and the dreck sinks. Let millions of other people benefit from your genius… no blog required!
On January 31, 2007 Technorati released a new feature to help people to get explations on things they see popping up in the blogosphere. Sometimes, that’s a personality or topic, like Paris Hilton or Tammy Nyp, sometimes it is an explanation of an obscure topic, like Second Life or BuzzTV.
...
If you think that you’ve got a better explanation than the one that shows up on top of Technorati search results for a term, no worries, just go and write your own, and get your friends to vote for it. WTF uses a special time weighted voting system that means that the most popular recent WTFs will show up on top of the page.
My initial reaction: WTF? And I don’t mean “Where’s the fire.”
Sure, go ahead and make DIGG-clones all you want. You can ask people to vote on anything, for all I care—yes, even Google search results. But please, next time go for a better-sounding name. WTF is such a cliche. It’s so old and overused. Why not OMGWTFBBQ or something more interesting?
WTF doesn’t even sound right as a verb. Sure you can “DIGG something to “vote” for it. Or you can “Google” something up (even on Yahoo!?). But will it be easy to ask someone to WTF something on Technorati? How’d you pronounce that? Watf? Wah-tah-fah? Crazy. I guess that’s why Technorati just says “vote for this” on their WTF buttons.
I’m pretty sure thousands of others are blogging about Technorati’s choice of names. Hey wait a minute. Now isn’t this one sneaky way to get buzz about your new service? Choose a crappy name, wait for people to write their laughs about it, and bam! You’ve got buzz.
WTF? There’s even a video on YouTube.
What do you think?