Apparently, Technorati is still going. The seven-year-old blog index site once threatened to be to the web’s nascent conversational search paradigm what Twitter Search is now, but has limped along for the last couple of years - plagued by server downtime, broken links, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Blog Search’s rise and the overtaking of blogging by social networking and microblogging in the tech fashion stakes.

So now it’s launching Twittorati, an attempt to have some of Twitter’s magic rub off on it. Somewhat confusingly, it’s a feed of tweets from Technorati’s Top 100 listed bloggers, complete with its own list of most popular hashtags. The idea appears to be providing an on-ramp to Twitter streams from the “highest authority” bloggers...

CEO Richard Jalichandra blogs (and tweets): “This is where the Blogosphere meets the Twittersphere. Twittorati shows what top bloggers are tweeting about, and how these trends compare to Blogosphere trends.” But will web users care for such a service any more than Technorati itself, which, while denying being overtaken by tweets, must otherwise be lamenting the splintering of blogs in to 140-character messages…

Jalichandra: “We’re asked all the time how platforms like Twitter and Facebook are impacting the Blogosphere. This is what we’re seeing: Twitter is not replacing blogs, but it has evolved as a major awareness vehicle for bloggers and people who read blogs (same goes for Facebook status updates).”

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