The news is just coming out that Technorati have lost two more employees. Tantek Celik has left after serving as 3 years as head of technology at Technorati and Adam Hertz has also left, after also serving for 3 years as the VP of Engineering. Both Tantek and Adam have played important roles in developing the technology at Technorati, with Tantek additionally being a spokesperson and evangelist of Microformats and other open standards.
From the blog post it appears that they have both left the company to pursue other opportunities. It is unknown if they are working on the same opportunity together, as they have left at the same time and worked closely together at Technorati. Having their two most important technology people leave is a big blow to Technorati. Tantek brought a lot of technical credibility to Technorati, which was especially needed as they have struggled with downtime and performance issues. Tantek was also responsible for a large part of the developer community that formed around the company and its services, and also played an important part in Technorati’s support for tags and microformats. Today you can find Technorati built into almost every blogging platform and their API being used in many different sites to display latest results, reputation and more. Technorati have had solid adoption amongst third-parties because of the level of developer evangelism and support that Tantek, along with others (such as Kevin Marks - who left for Google earlier this year) brought to the company.
It is yet to be seen what effect this will have on Technorati, as many third-party developers were loyal to the key developers at Technorati, most of who have now left the company. There were also many initiatives at Technorati, such as Microformats, that were being lead by the same key people who are no longer there. It also remains to be seen as to what will happen to those, and most importantly, if Technorati will be able to maintain their somewhat-lagging credibility with developers.
Update: It turns out that Technorati product manager Liz Dunn has also left the company, although there was no mention of it in Dave Sifry’s post. Liz has left Technorati to join Will Farrell’s Sequoia-back comedy video site FunnyOrDie as the Director of Product. Liz had been at Technorati for 18 months and was responsible for the new site they launched.
More to come on this story.
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A ton of typo errors in that post Nik - you might want to get them fixed.
they still got hirshberg!
you are too tough on technorati, you write about them as if they are a plague. chill dude.
The loss of Tantek Celik is indeed big news.
My goodness, even for blogs this is a poorly written post. Did you write this on horseback Nik?
Copy-editing needed.
hirshberg, oy
I wrote it sitting in a fast-moving car (no, I wasn’t driving). That original draft wasn’t supposed to go live. edited now, thanks for the comments. More to come on this story, too
Peter: a large part of Technorati’s popularity is due to developers building their various services into other applications, such as Wordpress. The main reasons why developers used Technorati is because they had a great group of developers there who would always be on IRC or available online to help people out. Those guys are all gone now - and I am afraid that much of the third-party support from developers that Technorati has enjoyed may go with them.
>> From the blog post it appears that they have both left the company to pursuit other opportunities.
Dont you mean “to pursue”?
Akoryus: No, I meant ‘pursuit’, it’s how most of the world spells it
CNN.com redesign page. it looks little better than yahoo frontpage
“Tantek bought a lot of technical credibility to Technorati” and “along with others (such as Kevin Marks - who left for Google earlier this year) bought to the company.”
I think you mean “brought”.
No, pursue is the verb, pursuit the noun–most of the world gets the grammar right. No need to be rude to readers who are simply trying to help out with copy editing. Uncool.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pursuit
v.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pursue
I’d agree with Akroyus, and Google would too:
“pursuit other opportunities” - 8 results
http://www.google.com/search?q.....&hl=en
“pursue other opportunities” - 200,000 results
http://www.google.com/search?h.....unities%22
Colin: I actually meant ‘bought’, as in, he bribed them into joining
Thanks for that. The first version that went live was shocking, I saved it as a future reminder not to hit publish until I re-read what I wrote
The CTO and VP Eng were unable to overcome performance and quality issues that plagued its service for years.
What technical credibility are you talking about?
Nik, according to http://en.allexperts.com/q/Gen.....ursuit.htm
‘pursuit’ is a noun. So did you mean to say that they left the company to chase other opportunities? If you did then using ‘pursue’ is grammatically correct.
lol - you guys are so anal for rather petty issues; as long as you reach your destination…who cares if you encounter a couple bumps in the road
typically negative slant. slipshod writing.
I think the problem here for Technorati is losing two key people at the same time.
If Liz Dunn is responsible for the latest version of the website, then it’s no sad loss — it’s damn awful.
Technorati had promise two or so years ago, but now they’re a lame duck. Which is a shame, cos I dug them in the beginning.
confused: The group of developers that Technorati hired did have a good level of credibility as most of them were known, or well-known for their previous work. They may not have done a good job with performance but on other fronts (tagging, Microformats, their API) they deserve a lot of the credit as they were early pioneers
max: I don’t think the post was that negative - I have a lot of respect for the people at Technorati, especially for the group of people who have now left. They bought a lot to blogging, especially in the early days as it was becoming more popular. I questioned if Technorati would lose some of its standing with developers since the people that have left were the main interface that most developers had to the company. I
wasn’t the only person who had the same thoughts when hearing the news.
Akorus: You may be right after all, although Wordpress won’t update the post now
Loosing 3 big heads!!! It’s not a good sign for the company.
Nik:
1/ It’s pursue. Not pursuit.
2/ >>> Liz had been at Technorati for 18 months and was responsible for the new site they launched.
I can only see Technorati falling away into insignificant over the next few years, what they actually offer as a service is pretty week.
These guys leaving know this, there is nothing new coming out of Technorati. WTF never really took off.
Chris @ http://www.frostfirebuzz.com
That’s sad news for Technorati really. Tantek, Kevin Marks… Who’s next?
Some times people are stifled under the tight constraints of organisation they work for and venture out to make it on their own,
http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
@Nic “The main reasons why developers used Technorati is because they had a great group of developers there who would always be on IRC or available online to help people out.”
Sorry, this is just plain wrong. Technorati’s “support” is unequivocally awful and has been for a long time.
In life, there is a time for everything. Time for coming and time for going.These people were not supposed to be at Technorati forever.Although they have left at the same time, I think Technorati will go on!
Wishing them all the best in their next career endeavours.
I used to be a big fan of Technorati but ever since it was blocked in China (where I live) I have been forced to look for alternatives. For a brief time I used sphere.com for blog search but have now resorted to Googles Blog search which while not perfect is conveniently accessibly when doing normal Google Searches. I fear this does not bode well for Technorati…. start preparing the dead pool. I predict that their assets will be snapped up by a competitor within the year. Sad that this may be - I really like(d) their service.
I read the post without looking for grammatical errors; hence I’m not an ass.
- also I got a lot more out of it; you guys should try it sometime. - RB
Well I really dont know How much contribution every on had in making Technorati but, as a whole the site is the largest aggregation of blogs in the world so any kind of a loss from the group who started this is a big news.
Beyondwww
i am a big faaaaaaaan