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October 1, 2007

New Technorati CEO Has A Challenge Ahead

Duncan Riley

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jalichandra.jpgTechnorati today announced its search for a new CEO was over, with Richard Jalichandra being appointed to the role, some 6 weeks since Technorati’s founding CEO David Sifry stepped down and 5 months since it was publicly confirmed that Technorati was seeking a new CEO.

Prior to joining Technorati, Jalichandra held roles at Exponential Interactive, Fox Interactive Media and IGN Entertainment. Most recently Jalichandra was Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Battery Ventures, an advisory board member at MyYearbook.com and Pixsy, and as an M&A and strategy consultant for several other startups.

The once great Technorati has floundered in recent years as attempts to broaden its product offering resulted in its core blog search product suffering for lack of development and support, all at the same time that Google Blog Search came to the fore. More recently, Technorati started downsizing staff as the approx. $20 million raised over three rounds started to dry up.

As I’ve noted previously, I’ve always had a soft spot for Technorati. When I started blogging in 2002, the only way of tracking the blogosphere was Technorati and perhaps to a lesser extent Daypop, which was never as good. Jalichandra’s challenge will be to focus Technorati on achievable goals, whilst purging the company of the excesses of the past. Technorati’s failed Digg clone WTF (the most unfortunate acronym I’ve ever seen) should be the first to go. Core competencies in blog search, in particular with focus on filtering results from spam blogs must be a priority. Given the new competition from Techmeme on the popular blog list side, a more frequently updating service from Technorati should be on the to-do list, with perhaps more contextual lists; say popular blogs by vertical and filtered results based on link age, for example link popularity over 1, 3, 6, and 12 months, then maybe an all-time popular list would be nice.

If you’ve got any advice for Jalichandra on how Technorati can rise from the endangered list, let him know in the comments.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. Ritu

    October 1st, 2007 at 6:16 pm

    Congratulations, Richard! Hope you can make Technorati fun and above all fast. It just seems like I have to wait quite a while to get to my page. Also like Duncan said, I as well have a soft spot for it and would like to see Technorati be on top again, Goodluck

  2. Rewardless.com

    October 1st, 2007 at 6:47 pm

    The largest impediment to Technorati is the brand name itself and the busy website.

    To see massive adoption Technorati should focus on simplification of the entire model to appeal to mainstream users.

    I am confused when I visit the site. Is it for seeing which blogs are updated? Or for searching? Or for seeing the most popular posts on a topic? Or for something completely different? How is it different from google?

    Answer those questions through simple design, branding, and navigation. “technorati” denotes technology and reeks of geekiness.

    I personally enjoy the site, it’s a great resource for content. But it needs to be cleaned up and repackaged if the goal is to run it like a big and competitive business.

    Good luck!

  3. Sean

    October 1st, 2007 at 6:55 pm

    Best of luck Richard, it’s definitely a challenge. The definition of “blog” is changing and Technorati will have to change too. Where do Twitter, tumblelogs, wikis, etc. fit into the Technorati view of the world? How do you help companies make their blogs useful and successful?

    Answer those question and you’re well on your way.

  4. datter1

    October 1st, 2007 at 7:26 pm

    That is one really bad photo.

  5. Wes

    October 1st, 2007 at 8:03 pm

    Best of luck to Richard. He has a big job on his hands and I wish him all the best.

  6. phenom

    October 1st, 2007 at 8:14 pm

    Congratulations, Richard! Hope you make technorati more fun
    http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

  7. Jay

    October 1st, 2007 at 8:42 pm

    Why do all geeks practically look the same?

  8. SteveBallmer

    October 1st, 2007 at 8:46 pm

    Never been to this site before, I hope they are good Microsoft apologist, are they?
    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  9. Kathy

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 am

    Richard is the best!!! Congrats!!

  10. Technoman

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:42 am

    Close it down.

  11. Tyler Wright

    October 2nd, 2007 at 1:12 am

    bring back the cool look and the ticker you had like 2 months ago!!!

  12. Eric

    October 2nd, 2007 at 10:16 am

    Accept that it is and probably always will be a service primarily utilized by bloggers themselves. And with that in mind, design it around their needs.

    Bloggers essentially care about two things:

    1. Tracking activity in their particular niche.
    2. Ego searches.

    On the first point, I’d go head to head with Techmeme - except I’d offer more verticals, or even better, dynamic verticals around a keyword. You should make it as easy as possible for anyone with a blog about gardening to find other blogs about gardening. Simple blog search is great, but it’d be far more useful to have a techmeme-like page showing what’s “hot” in the gardening niche.

    On the second point, I’d ramp up the social networking features - profiles, friend lists, maybe even a reader community similar to what mybloglog does.

    In general, I’d work hard on keeping spam out of the system and keeping search performance high.

    That’s my two cents, anyway.

  13. Velioncho

    October 2nd, 2007 at 11:17 am

    yes, it is bad photo indeed.

    May be there is no value to what Technorati is doing. I tried using blog searches initially when the blogs and search engines came out. However now I dont see the need to use blog search engine. I have my popular blogs(not many) bookmarked I just go and glance at them once a day. that is all I need to do. Blog search engines give me all junk results , some student blogs, some kids’ blogs, some midwest stayhome parent blogs etc., May be it is too early of time to have blog search engine.

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