Blog search engine PubSub had massive layoffs today after last minute merger discussions with knownow fell apart. It looks like a shutdown is imminent.
Pubsub ousted founding CEO Salim Ismail in March after losing a power struggle with co-founder Bob Wyman. Constantine Gus Spathis took over as CEO before Salim’s announced departure.
Update: I made some corrections to the above post after Bob Wyman responded by comment below.
Sounds likely. They’ve been struggling for a while.
The confusing workflow and UI hasn’t been improved for over a year.
I had to unsubscribe from my searches because most of the matches were spam blogs. Yuck…
Wow, your website has so many ads now!
Hope Steven Cohen willcome out of it okay. He is a bang-up speaker and his blog, Library Stuff, is outstanding and has greatly benefitted the library community.
I never got much good out of PubSub. Confusing interface and the results were nearly useless.
Mike: For now, just a few factual corrections:
1) No PubSub payrolls have been missed. We paid our full payroll on May 30th as is normally the case.
2) Gus replaced Salim as CEO of PubSub back in October, 2005. Salim didn’t resign from the board until January and didn’t leave the company until February. Thus, Gus Spathis replaced Salim as CEO long before “Salim’s departure.”
bob wyman
I joined PubSub, I used it, I wanted to, it was aimed to solve a problem I felt I had… Then it failed miserably to deliver in all counts.
That doesn’t mean it cannot improve in the future, but dissatified users are the hardest to earn back. Usually it is a lot easier (and cheaper) for a business to focus on acquiring new customers than trying to earn the love back from those who once were.
I think that may have to do with PubSub’s current problems, whatever they may be. New “companies” should take note (I know I do). While everything seems to be “beta” now, if you don’t deliver something compelling and useful today, you will lose the early adopters for good. Of course you can still be content with “the rest of us” (I am in fact enjoying a huge crowd of non-early-adopters using our services), just remember that those are truly moving targets, as opposed as the early adoprters who seem to always be there, ready to try you out (and as quick to leave you)…
Er… Nevermind. Best of luck to PubSub, whatever their fate may be.
Hey Art,
Mike Arrington spends alot of time on this blog… Why shouldn’t he be compensated? I think you’re just trolling…
Art, Robert
Anyone can run a blog, what really makes Mike different is he takes time to put himself out there, shaking hands and sharing wisdom, weather its in London, Seattle or the valley.
Thats really cool, keep up the good work!
Ouch… not good. Generally though acquisitions are hard. I hope pubsub pulls through it. They really need to turn up the innovation level because we haven’t heard much from them in a while.
Kevin
I never quite “got” PubSub–it didn’t meet my needs–but I understand they have some very powerful IP underneath. I hope that is worth enough to secure a buyer or cushion the landing. I’d echo the comments on Cohen, but he’s about as “employable” as someone could be.
PubSub is interesting (but I don’t use it), and I hope it lives.
Here is an interesting PubSub tidbit – its office is at the same address as another company from the dot com bubble, Blink. Blink was one of the first web bookmark managers back when we didn’t think much of being social in the context of bookmarks. Blink ended in a similar way, being sold to a Californian company only to be abandoned later.
Oh, and not only did these two company share the same address, they really are in the exact same office space on Fulton St., downtown NYC.
Haunted address?
Thanks Hope and Tim.
Obviously, I won’t talk about this situation. Where ever I end up working, I know that in the end, it’s the health and vitality of my family that matters the most.
Yowza. Guess I need to ammend some of my slide decks. Hopefully someone picks up the underlying tech, as I think it’s fundamentally sound (even if it does need tuning to weed out spam).
Steven, Michael,
What happens to the Structured Blogging initiative? I sure hope that doesn’t become road kill with PubSub!
Structured Blogging is now a seperate entity, filing for non-profit status. Since the last website redesign, it has no longer been stored on PubSub servers. There are over 50 companies involved in the initiative and while PubSub has played a large role, it is the community that keeps it alive.
Hm, and what happens to FeedMesh now? I thought that was hosted by PubSub as well.
Major bummer. Is there somewhere to get more details as they happen?
Not surprised. I reported problems with their tech to them several times with never a response or acknowledgement.
I agree that beta services should provide some value during the first user experience so that early adopters have incentive to stick with it as website is improved. ZAADZ is example of site that did not provide much value for me when I frist tried it then later when several of my friends started using ity and the network effect start happening its value increased. Check out the way they encourage community feedback and post updates on what priority updates are in the pipeline. PubSub did not did deliver valuable results for me and I did not see any path to a future version that would become valuable to me any time soon..
How long before techcrunch becomes fuckedcompany2.0.com?
I tried to use pubsub, but my “alerts” never “took.” Obviously, a company with a good idea, and — I think — good technology, but those two things do not always spell success. I hope the people all land on their feet.
May I ask ONE simple question?
What’s the “business model” of pubsub? I mean, from where do they make money?
If it’s not making money, then of course it’s investors are RIGHT on their part to opt for insolvency…..
David Thomson, you seem to be a negative person… you don’t seem good for the society… Web2.0 is just an effort to make internet more useful for everyone… It’s an initiative to bring more people on the platform + save more bandwidth than ever before… it’s an initiative to make it a more better world…. and you’re here condemning the efforts for a change?
Vishal,
Negative? Maybe. Jaded? Pretty much. Worried? Absolutely! I’ve been down this road before. In fact many of us have. In the Web 1.0 world I was both fortunate and unfortunate to have worked for seven companies in the span of 1999-2002. Two exist today and I watched the rest implode. So when I see posts like this I get nervous and bring it to attention.
Having a viable business model is something that should have been learned by all after the collapse of web 1.0. Being purchased by Google, Yahoo, IAC, or News Corp should not be the end game, it should be one of many viable exit strategies. As you alluded in your previous post, making money should be the priority.
I must not be the only one worried, jaded, or negative as this very post now lives in the Deadpool.
http://www.tech...m/tag/DEADPOOL/
As for your comments, I’m not sure where I am condeming the efforts for change. I’m very happy that the entire software industry has been tossed on its head over the past two years as it started to rebound and that new methods of interface design and engineering have emerged. Its exciting to see my customers talk about moving away from their embeded JSP pages, 5 step processes, and actually wanting to learn dom based javascript and AJAX principles because the finally get it that usability is important. And its happening on the enterpise!
As for Pubsub, I know nothing about the business model or the company and my comments were purely on the circumstances.
cheers
Hi,
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I wish luck to Steven M. Cohen.
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Structured Blogging is now a seperate entity, filing for non-profit status. Since the last website redesign, it has no longer been stored on PubSub servers. There are over 50 companies involved in the initiative and while PubSub has played a large role, it is the community that keeps it alive.