We reported in July that Palo Alto-based wiki startup SocialText was looking for a new CEO to help speed growth.
Tonight they are announcing their new CEO – former Cisco and Adobe exec Eugene Lee. Founder and former CEO Ross Mayfield becomes Chairman and President of the company. The company is also announcing a $6.5 million second tranche of its Series C funding ($3 million was announced in May 2007). The company has now raised a total of $14.1 million.
Wow! Looking at Socialtext.net and Socialtext.com on Alexa and Compete.com, then reviewing their Sourceforge.net download stats: I’m shocked! All these metrics have been in a dramatic decline since the beginning of the year.
Here’s an interesting and relevant read: http://www.mind...sourceforgenet/
It’s clear they have, at least, a very serious quality problem with their software.
Mate, mate – come on – you just wish you’d had $14.1m to play with
m
Of course the Alexa numbers (as random as they may be) don’t tell the real story for Socialtext — they’re selling into enterprises who aren’t hosting the product under the socialtext.* domains. They could be doubling sales every month and it wouldn’t show up on Alexa.
ONE MORE TIME!
All of this “social” stuff is a ….. C’mon you know, say it…..
a FAD!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Nonetheless, I wonder how much they pay?
I do hav a little spare time on my hands.
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
@Mike and @Nathan,
You guys are so diplomatic.
I’m only voicing what’s already become common knowledge. With open source companies you have a clear metric for gaging public interest and success: downloads.
Why waste more money on this startup (it being not a startup anymore, but rather a finish-up (I coined it, 5 cents everyone time someone uses it))
Coined on this blog in this article.
http://techwast...nyone-care.html
Can you wiki commenters actually call out some verifiable ROI on wikis?
Sure wikis can help with collaboration and can quickly get staff to embrace since it “empowers them.” But how about defining some real payback for this technology. Not saying it does not exists, but I would like to hear some specific details.
I also was wondering if anyone has heard about a company called Customervision, which proclaims to have found the balance between open and controlled collaboration.
@ed
Don’t ask us, ask the users: http://www.mind...ise-technology/
I don’t see any specifics about ROI. You can do better, I hope!
I’ve worked for Eugene Lee. All I can say is, those people are in for a lot of abuse.
@betty Ouch, don’t forget your blogging etiquette. That’s not a very nice thing to say and you know he most likely will stumble upon these comments.
@Aaron – downloads are a good metric for a company whose revenue model is selling eyeballs. Not the case at ST.
@Eric: Redhat, MySQL, Alfresco, Novell, etc sell eyeballs? Oky doky.
Downloads are the only meaningful metric for open source enterprise software companies.
@Me: I should say, downloads are the only meaningful metric for _startup_ open source enterprise software companies.
@Aaron I understand your point – I was making a general statement that downloads are a good metric for companies whose revenue models involve “attention”. I agree there is no mutual exclusivity here.
I think part of what I was getting across is captured in your post (#15) – your statement adding the word “_startup_” suggests declining correllation between revenues/mindshare and downloads as an organization matures. I would agree with that as well.
@Aaron – There are more ways to measure a company than “number of downloads” alone, especially considering Socialtext’s core business is providing purpose-built appliances and/or hosted wiki services to its clients (not just giving away free software!). You seem to be overlooking the other recent metrics on Socialtext that demonstrate significant traction in market, like the company’s position in the Gartner MQ (most visionary and second only to MSFT/IBM/BEA in terms of ability to execute) or the new public customer count of over 4K customers using Socialtext today (including names like Humana, Epitaph Records, Symantec, Nokia, many others).
Don’t any of you wiki providers out there have objective ROI to define why we should really care? Nathan only pointed to some general stuff. Is this a product searching for ROI riding on the back of “empowerment the people?”