Ask.com finally did something with its acquisition of Bloglines and rolled out a new blog search tool. The product leaves me largely cold. The new search site utilizes subscription data from Bloglines users to rank posts by popularity, but they did nothing to create a product that comes anywhere close to rivaling T'Rati's authority ranking features. Plus it doesn't work. Try this search for iPod. The number one result is Apple's product site. That's not very bloggy.
Alternatives to Technorati are helpful, but blog search has a long way to go and no one has come close to tackling the biggest nuts of all - comment mining, localization, concordance, etc.
Bloglines still feels like a largely stagnant, but important player an industry that's moving too quickly for them. All of their competitors - from Google to Newsgator to Technorati and Rojo - are doing more to innovate in the search/RSS arena. Just look at T'Rati's experiments in the microformats arena or what RawSugar is doing with guided blog search. It's too bad because Bloglines was the leader until IAC bought them. It's the classic case of a small player losing steam once they are acquired by a larger one. File this under too little, too late.
