Technorati Changes Rating System?

Surprisingly there was only a small reaction in the blogosphere surrounding DoshDosh's Technoraties Favorite Exchange program. While blogger's including Darren Rowse of Problogger questioned the value of the experiment and the result it had on Technorati's Top 100, many small bloggers latched onto the idea with great excitement.

Early on in the experiment, when I felt it still had value and hadn't started receiving requests from splogs, I jumped from a handful to well over a hundred ticks on my "favorited" count. I also jumped about 70 links coming closer to my "200 blogs link here goal." With so much attention being brought to the favorite system, and many blogs turning the experiment into a gaming mechanic, it was clear something would eventually change.

Enter Technorati's new "Authority" system of ranking. Taking a peak at the image above you can see how the original blog information was displayed. That image, taken roughly a month ago, shows the original setup. Rank included a list of total links as well as a rough count of the number of blogs from which those links originated. The new setup can be seen below.

The change here is quite striking. While your rank remains the link count has disappeared and has been replaced by an "Authority" rank. Right now there hasn't been an official announcement, at least that I can see, concerning the change.

I've browsed around the site and even followed the question mark shown on the readout but have found little. The question mark, seen in both images above, still leads to an article titled "Making Sense of Link Counts" from last October. Whether this is a response to the DoshDosh experiment or simply a natural evolution of the system remains to be seen.

I'm curious to see how it develops and am looking forward to the official announcement from Technorati.