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Search - Thursday, August 16, 2007

Technorati's CEO Out. Startup Turned Over To The Mob

We tend not to throw elbows wildly at the startups that we cover. It's just too hard to know exactly what is going on behind closed doors at startups. Hearing from a source or two that a founder is an SOB has to be taken with some grain of salt. But we have been covering Technorati since 2004 and there always seems to be disappointing news to report and talent always seem to be leaving. Where there's smoke there's fire and today the fire was raging full on.

By most measures, Technorati is a success. Traffic is solid and growing. The mainstream press from NPR to CNN turns to ts leader Dave Sifry to tell them what is going on in the blogosphere and ad sales appear to be picking up as well.

The trouble seems to be that expectations for the company, from its investors and in the blogosphere, have always been high as it has been championed as a legitimate rival to Google's search dominance. And the company just doesn't seem to learn from its mistakes. Most notably, we and others have complained about how slow and unreliable the site can be.

Today was an ignominious day for Technorati as the site went down for some time. Moreover, its CEO Dave Sifry announced that he is stepping down immediately and will turn over the CEO position to a group of company execs. Sifry explains: "As of today, Teresa Malo, CFO, Dorion Carroll our Vice President of Engineering and Derek Gordon, our Vice President of Marketing, will operate as a committee of the Office of the President, jointly focused on the day-to-day management of Technorati and achieving some important, very strategic milestones. This committee will report directly to our Board of Directors."

Moreover, a group of 8 is being fired. To add insult to injury the blogosphere jeered Sifry for his poor handling of his departure.

So what happened to make Sifry have to run for the exits sooner than planned? Sifry explains that it is just taking longer than expected to find a replacement. In our experience it could be one of several issues: a) Sifry is a lame duck so there is chaos as subordinates are ignoring him b) People are listening to him, which is bad because his management has proven to make investors unhappy c) Sifry is doing a poor job in interviews with a potential new CEO and turning candidates off d) Sifry decided he really didn't need this shit any more e) and maybe the company really couldn't afford his expense any more - Sifry explains that 8 were axed to reduce expenses after all.

Is it too late for Technorati to fulfill expectations? Perhaps not. A new CEO with ambitions for Technorati to be scary again could turn things around quickly. We saw some traffic numbers for people search tool Spock that were very impressive. There are a number of new search functions that Technorati could add that could give it a new growth spurt.

Read - A change in Seasons (Sifrey alerts)
Read - Technorati Is Dying Before Our Eyes (the a:c)