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August 16, 2007

Technorati Loses A “Great Leader.” PodTech Also Loses CEO

Michael Arrington

70 comments »

We’ve all known that blog search engine Technorati and videocasting site PodTech weren’t doing particularly well: that both companies were conducting CEO searches. But today the bloodletting became real.

PodTech CEO John Furrier is out. James McCormick, the COO, steps up to the CEO position. The company also announced that 1938 Media is no longer partnering with them, which is a real loss.

Technorati is a bit more complicated. Dave Sifry, the founder, is no longer CEO. And surprisingly, he is no longer an employee with the Company at all. And no one is replacing him yet.

Sifry said previously that he’d stay with the company: “I expect to resume a more active role in product development.” Today the message was the opposite: “I would go ahead and transition to the board exclusively.”

Teresa Malo, CFO, Dorion Carroll Vice President of Engineering and Derek Gordon, Vice President of Marketing, now jointly run the company.

Sifry’s last blog post as CEO of the company was representative of his entire tenure - vague and cold. Layoffs also occurred today but Sifry didn’t mention them until the end. The blog post sort of went like this:

me….me…me…and oh yeah we layed off eight people.

Sifry also refers to himself as a “great leader” in the fourth paragraph of his post.

How about a different approach? Perhaps a blog post lamenting the layoffs and the disruption in people’s lives would have been in order. And then an ending saying that he takes responsibility for the problems which led to this and will be stepping down, too.

To be fair to Dave, some people who’ve worked with him say he cares a lot about the wellbeing of his employees, and will go above and beyond the norm for them when needed. That side of him doesn’t come out very well in his blog posts. But writing an “I’m leaving” post is certainly difficult to do. I’m not saying I think the post was entirely appropriate, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to some extent.

Update: David Dalka thinks Technorati’s Google SEO tactics may have accelerated Sifry’s departure. And it does look like the Technorati traffic party has ended - Technorati no longer shows up in the search results for the terms I mentioned in that post.

  • Sphere It

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Comments

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  1. PublisherZilla

    August 16th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

    I suppose that’s just the nature of the beast. I like seeing things get mixed up. Fun to watch how people react, who steps up, etc.

  2. David Litsky

    August 16th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    Does Technorati really matter anymore? With all the social bookmarking, network, chatting, video, and etc sites easily able to SEO into google, I don’t see the need…

  3. Robert Dewey

    August 16th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

    Six paragraphs until he mentions the layoffs…

    Ever since their new layout design (which includes that scroll at the top), I completely lost interest in Technorati. I now predominately use Google to search through blogs.

  4. Zoli Erdos

    August 16th, 2007 at 1:51 pm

    Wonder if any of the layoff came from Customer Support. They have stopped responding to support requests (even those on the public forum) for a while :-(

  5. Deals and Coupons

    August 16th, 2007 at 1:54 pm

    I was going to say slow news day, but this definitely turned it around.

  6. Alaska Miller

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    So I guess some really big news for people that care about trivial news. Yeah, hold up and let me go outside and walk around for a bit. Maybe I’ll bump into someone that knows what this PodTech/Technorati thingamabob is.

  7. David Evans

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

    I was always surprised that Technorati never took over managing local tags via a plugin or parternships with hosted blog companies. That was a big mistake, so was their clunky Track Conversations widget.

    So many days of downtime, the massive amounts of spam, the herculean task or sorting the junk from the good stuff, that IT staff is fighting an uphill battle daily, my hats off to them.

    It’s not important in what paragraph he mentions the layoffs, at least he mentions them, although it would have been nice to mention names.

    Is there another startup for Dave around the corner?

    Are there really not any good CEO’s floating around? I find that difficult to believe.

  8. Mathew Ingram

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:22 pm

    Ted Shelton’s post is back up

  9. Greg

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:28 pm

    Oh my god, the CFO and the Marketing director are in charge? I don’t really care about Technorati at all, but man, they are boned.

  10. Edwin Khodabakchian

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:30 pm

    I was never really impressed with Technorati. Too much hype and spin. Not enough focus and value to the user. You can only sustain that so long. Hopefully the transition will help them focus and connect back with the reality.

  11. Eric

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

    Can’t say it’s surprising, though I’m kind of sad about Technorati… it used to be useful, but then they lost site of their core audience - bloggers doing ego searches.

    I’d have liked to have seen it evolve into a competitor to Techmeme and offer more social networking features for bloggers, but those things never seemed to have materialized. Instead, over time there seemed less and less a reason to prefer technorati over google blog search. Shame.

  12. Apple

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:45 pm

    It’s nice to become Entrepreneur. You can make rightful decision.

  13. stone

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:55 pm

    Can anyone actually say they use this site a lot? IMHO they’ve always had serious UI issues, not to mention relevancy issues. They are out there at trade shows “talking a good game” but where’s the substance? They have been conducting a very open CEO search. Their old CEO (Sifry) planned to stay on until someone is found. Now he’s gone. This is a very BAD sign.

  14. simon

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    Sifry misspelled “loser” with “leader”

  15. Sprezzatura

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:05 pm

    @ #7: “Are there really not any good CEO’s floating around? I find that difficult to believe.”

    Of course there are. They just don’t want that particular job. Can you blame them?

  16. ted

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:09 pm

    “great leader”… right. Sad thing is, once you’ve been CEO, people generally assume you’re a decent leader, so we haven’t seen the last of Sifry.

  17. Triscuit

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:10 pm

    I don’t blame them….those are big shoes to step into.

  18. Tony

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    I can’t really agree that the loss of 1938 media was a loss. This was just some dude constantly bitching about things. Out of curiousity, is there anyone out there that was into their videos?

  19. Josh Petersen

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:23 pm

    Was this 37Signals fault as well?

  20. Peterpoh

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:24 pm

    But Hirshberg is still involved @ Technorati!!! Long live Hirshberg!!!

  21. AnonymousExEmployee

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:59 pm

    Here’s the thing: Dave *says* he cares about his employees and goes above and beyond for them. That’s not true. He fired the head of Ops during a temper tantrum last month, he constantly de-focused his team with mediocre ideas, and he cared more about what other “important” people like the ones he met at Davos thought of him than about running a company. His departure is too little, too late.

  22. Jimmy Huen

    August 16th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

    Technorati can be “gamed” easily. I’ve exposed its flaws before and plenty of bloggers are still doing it. Until it’s algorithm is altered, it will continue to lose credibility.

  23. Colin Dowling

    August 16th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    Technorati never struck me as particularly useful, even when there weren’t other players. The line on the front page that there are zillions of sites out there, some have to be good doesn’t sound like much confidence that their product is going to do much to sort the good from the bad. Maybe that’s just me.

  24. max

    August 16th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    statistics show technorati is still beating google. have you noticed that techcrunch always takes the most negative stance towards technorati? maybe they turned mike arrington down for ceo…

  25. TDavid

    August 16th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    Technorati has been a ship without oars for too long. They’re running out of money and having to lay off eight people doesn’t equal a “great leader” under any definition.

    @18 Tony - I thought Feldman at 1938 brought some entertainment value to the otherwise mostly too long and poor use of the medium video clips at Podtech. Scoble’s videos became more tolerable once he got an editor but it might have been a too little too late deal there.

    Any word on whether or not Scoble is still there?

  26. Lex

    August 16th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    I used to use Technorati, but like everyone else, that was before I had too many bad searches on Technorati, and before Google jumped in.

    The mission of Google is to make everything searchable. Everything. Unless your custom search engine is for a teeny-tiny specialization, you are placing yourself directly in the path of the juggernaut. It’s not Google’s fault if someone builds a company directly in their path. As G’s interest expand, though, it does become a bit harder to stay out of its way, but there is still plenty of open space for everyone to not bump into each other. And yet, we still find several dozen talented thinkers and engineers in this world wasting their time at places like Powerset. Oy!

  27. AnotherExEmployee

    August 16th, 2007 at 4:45 pm

    Same old dave, still thinks he matters. How bad does it have to get before they replace you with no one?

  28. Jon

    August 16th, 2007 at 5:25 pm

    I am sure there are a lot of top quality executives out there… the problem is jumping on board a ship that has no rudder without any wind in its sails. A great leader steers with their hands if need-be and blows on the sails till the wind returns… in other words, if a person doesn’t live and breath on board, the ship will eventually sink. (as we have/are seeing).

    Jon

  29. Aishwarya

    August 16th, 2007 at 5:27 pm

    Furrier couldn’t get any takers, word is only 4 bit the hook, none staying for even the second rounds. So they had to pull an insider game. McCormick is one of those characters that try and position themselves as failed company saviors, but it’s never worked, least in McCormick’s case. His entire career is one failed company after another, Podtech proving not to be an exception. Another USVP blank shot.

    As for Sifry, his arrogance and constant self-crooning have half the Valley clapping hands. And Technorati has long ceased to be of any value, easily gamed too. Good riddance.

  30. a.non

    August 16th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

    David Sifry seems to have started few companies. Has any of it succeeded financially?

    How is Sifry’s reputation in the industry? (Besides few negative comments here)

  31. Don Park

    August 16th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    Everything aside, Dave Sifry is one of the nicest guys I’ve met and wish him well. We all have our faults and the time to point them out is now past so I think we should just let it be.

  32. Kendall

    August 16th, 2007 at 5:56 pm

    Leadership is about making meaning in the company, inspiring others and putting people first. The blog post by the former CEO infers the opposite. Surely the board will replace the role with a single leader, as opposed to what appears as the current configuration using a combination of executives.

  33. Dave Stir-Fry

    August 16th, 2007 at 5:59 pm

    yet and somehow Sifry can keep screwing up and VC’s will keep writing him cheques..

    Linuxcare (clusterfuck), Sputnik (broke), and now Technorati

    As one commenter said, too little, too late - if I was a Technorati investor I would have cut that cord a long time ago, any opportunity they had has been lost now. All this talk of revenue and growth is complete crap

  34. johnny

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    Don Park: maybee technorati should hire you as a motivational speaker

  35. Dominic

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    All of you bashers just wish you were the CEO of a company. It’s always easy to shoot down someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. Oh but wait, you write comments on TC, hence you are qualified for what????nada..zip……nuffin. It doesn’t take a lot of courage to bash someone anonymously. Some of you would probably get your teeth handed to you should you do that face to face,

  36. AnonymousExEmployee

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    @Don Park: he may be a nice guy, but he called himself a “Great Leader,” today. So that’s why this discussion is happening now, because no one seems to agree that he is a great leader.

  37. CantTouchThis

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    I heard that Dave is being replaced by this guy:

    http://technorati.com/about/staff.html?s=sunshine

    true? Or maybee he was also fired..

  38. Nathan Weinberg

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    I was going to describe your post as vicious and mean, but… you’re right on the mark. Keep it up, Mike.

    I hate to see bad things happen to the industry, but from a journalistic perspective, things are sometimes more interesting this way. If there is a fall, I expect to see you and Valleywag tracking it all the way down.

  39. a black tech blogger

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    “The company also announced that 1938 Media is no longer partnering with them, which is a real loss.”

    This comment disturbs me, considering the material that preceded Loren’s departure, and techcrunch’s lack of commentary on that material: http://blog.wired.com/business.....1938-.html

    I think that under the circumstances PodTech is to be commended for this choice.

  40. iMarketingGuru (Search Marketing Wiki)

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:28 pm

    Technorati has far too many issues when it comes to the interface but it does allow you to see the centers of web concerning hubs and what-not. Everyone loves the whole blog directory advanced search but really, the linkage data isn’t very sophisticated and there really isn’t enough monetization. As for PodTech, they just need more UI work and more functionality add-ons.

  41. He didn't say he's a great leader

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:33 pm

    Umm, to say that he came right out and called himself a “great leader” is a little bit of a stretch and definitely taking it out of context. This is what he wrote: “the board is still conducting a search for the next great leader of this great company”

    I think he was more trying to drum up inspiration and whatever than tooting his own horn, something that you seem to do quite a bit.

  42. David

    August 16th, 2007 at 7:16 pm

    http://www.daviddalka.com/crea.....echnorati/

  43. Shelley

    August 16th, 2007 at 7:26 pm

    We knew when Tantek and Kevin Marks left that things were not going well at Technorati. The writing was on the wall with PodTech, too.

    The main reason I commented though was to agree completely, one hundred percent, with #39, black tech blogger. I am, frankly, surprised you would see this as a loss.

    Or not.

  44. soxiam

    August 16th, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    I find myself agreeing with comment #41. This post feels biased or at the very least taking stuff out of context to support your opinion. In other words, the reason why you fired your TechCrunch UK editor:

    “He saw an opportunity for attention and took it, even at the cost of hurting someone else. I see this all the time - get a well known blogger to lose their cool and then leverage that event for further attention. Sure, Loic lost his cool. But he promptly apologized. He did not deserve to be trashed in a new post.”

    http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=322

  45. anon

    August 16th, 2007 at 8:07 pm

    I thought it was great for PodTech to quickly disassociate themselves from 1938 Media after said video.

  46. Blake

    August 16th, 2007 at 10:06 pm

    “Great Leader” = “Dear Leader”?

  47. jvon

    August 17th, 2007 at 1:57 am

    I like most of the stuff at 1938 Media. The main impact of the Podtech deal going away, to me, is that I won’t be subjected to that awful Podtech player. No idea what was in it for 1938, whether it’s a good or bad thing for them.

    I’m also not clear who left whom, or if it really matters at this point.

  48. Jeremy Thomas

    August 17th, 2007 at 2:27 am

    Don’t know if I agree with your take on Dave Sifry being cold. The context of the paragraph where he discusses the layoffs is very different to what you depicted. He writes the words “Undertaking this action was gut wrenching…”. Doesn’t seem cold to me.

  49. AnonymousExEmployee2

    August 17th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    he was hated by everyone in the office except for a couple of young idealistic hero-worshiping engineers (one of whom was just fired).

    for the sake of the people left, I hope that this can be turned around (but I highly doubt it). sifry was left too long to do too much damage - to morale, reputation, cash flow, etc.

  50. max

    August 17th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    technorati deserves some credit for announcing that people have “left” when they were obviously fired. look back on the people who have “left.” i bet Technorati canned their asses.

  51. David Mackey

    August 17th, 2007 at 12:06 pm

    Well…Posts must oftentimes be cold and distant. Oftentimes when removed from a position of authority, or removing oneself from a position of authority, one must do what is “best for the company” in a sense, even if it is a detriment personally.

  52. Wai Yip Tung

    August 17th, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    Go read the post. Sifry did not call himself “great leader”. It is unfair for TechCrunch to infer this from what he actually said!

  53. Michael Arrington

    August 17th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

    Wai - he says “the board is still conducting a search for the next great leader of this great company.” He is clearly referring to himself as a great leader in that sentence, which is what I say above. No way that can be disputed. However, I do think it was a Freudian slip. Which says a lot.

  54. John

    August 18th, 2007 at 4:18 am

    Hope dave still gets to write great WTF’s, like he did on Aug 4
    http://www.technorati.com/wtf/.....e-web-cl-1

    Nothing like sex videos to pass the time at work.

  55. Tom

    August 19th, 2007 at 11:39 pm

    Loren Feldman was obnoxious and annoying, I’m glad he’s no longer affiliated with PodTech.

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