Icerockets in flight

Again via Snarkaholic, introducing a new search engine targeting the blogosphere specifically -- IceRocket. According to Tish G. and Blake Rhodes, the smooth-talking company rep, IceRocket is supposed to be better at digging deeper into the Long Tail, turning up more fleabloggers like Snarkaholic and yours truly in the search results.

How do they do it? Well, they put less stock in permalinks than other engines like Google and Technorati, and favor the "immediacy of information" over archives containing information which is often long since passed into irrelevance or obsolescence, effectively turning on its head the conventional marks of importance that keep the "A-List" ubiquitous whenever you run a garden-variety search. Icerocket seems to get it that any blogger who hasn't been around long enough to have amassed tons of permalinks from the rest of the 'sphere has little if any chance of having his or her voice heard right now, save for when they appear briefly in the Technorati background noise or get what's called an "Instalanch" when an A-Lister like Instapundit notices you and gives you a link in one of his posts.

Whatever the long-term impact of Icerocket on the inherent power imbalances of the new media, I'm pleased to have discovered another way to find my way through the blogosphere. I wish Mr. Rhodes and his colleagues well!