Online journal tracker Technorati unveiled its revamped website on Monday as the worldwide "blogosphere" continued to expand at a stunning rate.
Technorati overhauled its website devoted to tracking blogs — multi-media journals kept online and shared with others via the Internet — to mark its third anniversary, according to the San Francisco company.
"The new version of the site is designed to make the exponentially growing universe of citizen media, including blogs, internet video, and photos, more accessible to everyday users," Technorati said in a statement.
The number of weblogs in the "global blogosphere" doubles every five months, according to Technorati data.
The website said it made it easier for visitors to discover, organize or search for any of the nearly 50 million blogs it tracked as of Monday.
Technorati enhanced search technology to quickly deliver new blog entries and improved a mechanism to provide "authority" feedback by keeping count of the number of Internet links to individual blogs, according to the company.
A California appeals court gave a boost to "blogger" legitimacy and US online news freedom in May by ruling that those who break news on blogs have the same rights as newspaper, television or radio reporters when it comes to keeping sources confidential.
"We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish 'legitimate' from 'illegitimate' news," the justices concluded.
Any attempt to do so would "imperil" the "rough-and-tumble" free press process endorsed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the decision explained.
