Today, Technorati, Dave Sifry's "science project" turned blogospheric barometer, celebrates its third anniversary with the roll-out of an "updated version" of its site and service.

On the Technorati weblog Dave explains the four major front and back-end changes. As Sifry explains, Technorati has improved its "core search technologies that index new information within minutes of being posted to the Web." The Search page has been re-designed for ads to be "less intrusive" and to have "more results above the fold", as well as " better sorting options - including sorting by language, authority, and freshness." New link-counting mechanisms promise to give bloggers better results on who's linking to them at any given time.

Other features include making it easier to find new blogs via the Discover section, as well as updates to its Popular and Favorites features.

Dave also notes that Technorati is now "integrated with" Wall Street Journal Online, similar to their projects with Washingtonpost.com, Der Spiegel, and Associated Press.

AOL's newly re-launched Netscape.com homepage has raised questions about how it looks and how it works. Jon Dube (and others) quickly notedthat the site " ranks stories based on users votes, just like Digg.com." When a the top-ranked story on the beta brought up the similarities Jason Calacanis, general manager of Netscape, commented: "We did not create the New Netscape to copy DIGG, no more than DIGG copied Delicious or Delicious copied Furl. All of these sites are evolutions of the first wave of bookmarking services. The key thing we are doing different is that we are having our editorial team followup on stories that make it to the top 20 list. We're not doing this to become gatekeepers, but rather to add a journalist process to the power of social bookmarking. You can call this metajournalism or social journalism, and I think it's the logical next step."

Terry Heaton points out a timely underlying message for local broadcast affiliates in the new Netscape design: "Brand actually does matter online, and the strategies and tactics of amazing start-ups that tap the media 2.0 paradigms can be duplicated by brands more established with the masses (and have more money)."

Paying attention to the Netscape-Digg hybrid as an example of what they can and should be doing prove instructive for affiliates that are trying to build "2.0 applications that meet the news and information needs of local audiences."