We have something of a love/hate relationship with Technorati here... well, perhaps "love/hate" is too strong. Fascination/irritation is probably better. Technorati helps us keep track of who is linking in to us, and has shown us many excellent sources of links and information; it's a very useful tool for tracking the evolution of various online memes, as well. But it doesn't update its numbers as often as we'd like (we've been stuck at the exact same number of sites & links for about a month now), and it's definitely a bit too popular for its own good -- system crash pages are unfortunately all too common on busy days.
Still, I have to agree with Wired's Adam Penenberg when he argues that "Technorati has become a public utility on a global scale." If Google gives a sense of the structure of the Internet, Technorati gives a sense of its flow: the propagation of ideas, of influence, of perspective. To the degree that blogging has become a valuable adjunct to traditional reporting, Technorati gives the blogs a collective voice, and gives readers entry to ongoing and constantly-evolving conversations stretching across multiple sites.
Penenberg ties his Technorati observations back to the web response to the London bombings. If we're all now historians, Technorati is the ever-changing index to tomorrow's history books.
(Via Picturephoning)