Valleywag
leaks
Posts Tagged “
Technorati
”
Draper Fisher Jurvetson's big blog mistake
Technorati has raised another $7.5 million from existing venture-capital backers, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The company has raised $30 million to date. Anyone know the valuation? Given Technorati's fall from Web grace, and the loss of founder Dave Sifry, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a "down round" — an investment that values the company at less than previous rounds did. [PEHub]
leaks
jobs
Technorati needed a new systems adminstrator, like, yesterday
Rocketboom's Andrew Baron is fed up with Technorati, and switching to Google. Could the blog search engine's problems be due to the fact that there's no one minding the servers? Because the company is offering an "IMMEDIATE" postition as a contract senior sys admin. Considering how long it took for the company to find a new CEO, this could get ugly. Managers are a dime a dozen — competent sys admins are a much rarer breed.
forecasts
Valleywag's 25 predictions for 2008
Valleywag is of course known for its dead-on accuracy, so our predictions for 2008 need no introduction. Inside, my 25 predictions (made without inside information) cover the futures of Facebook, Google, Digg, YouTube, Twitter, the Wall Street Journal, Apple, Yahoo, Gawker Media, AOL, Dell, LOLcats, the president, and more. More »
11:11 PM on Fri Dec 21 2007
By Nick Douglas
11,861 views,
28 comments
hires
Technorati attempts to regain relevance
The blogosphere was thrown into chaos when its search king, Technorati's David Sifry, abdicated his throne in August. The search for a new CEO went on for months. Who, after all, wanted to venture into a market increasingly dominated by Google, whose Blog Search was making Technorati increasingly irrelevant? But Technorati's board, at last, has found their patsy.Richard Jalichandra, a former business development guru at IGN Entertainment and Fox Interactive Media, whom insiders believe had a hand in the merger been game sites IGN and GameSpy, the acquisition of film site Rotten Tomatoes, and the company's acquisition by News Corp. for $650 million. Or not. More »
hires
The fall of the evangelist CEO
The chaos at Technorati and PodTech, two startups which saw outside CEO searches end in failure last week, should be instructive to company founders everywhere. If you're asking yourself if it's time to step aside, it's too late. Entrepreneurs are often excellent evangelists — the peculiar Silicon Valley breed of marketer who seeks to create fervor for a product few even understand, let alone think they need. Sifry and Furrier are both typical of this kind. But the career of evangelist bears a particular occupational hazard: The risk of starting to believe your own preachings, and of thinking that no one else is fit to deliver them. More »
technorati
Blog search CEO steps down amid declining relevance
Dave Sifry, the founder and CEO of Technorati, is immediately stepping down from the role of CEO as the blog search pioneer continues to burn cash and fails to find a working business model. CFO Teresa Malo, VP of engineering Dorion Carroll and VP of marketing Derek Gordon will govern by committee until they find a new CEO. The company's search for an outside leader, which began last spring, has failed to find any takers. Eight other Technorati employees were also fired "to adjust our expense structure to be more appropriately aligned with our priorities moving forward." In other words, they're running out of cash, despite several small rounds of funding meant to keep them afloat. Technorati pioneered and had an early lead in blog search, an area where Google should have excelled. Since then, Google's Blog Search has improved while Technorati's has gotten worse. And as the lines between mainstream journalism and the blogosphere continue to blur, dedicated blog search has increasingly become irrelevant — a fact that's surely not lost on any CEO candidates Technorati might find.
breakdowns
San Francisco datacenter renamed "364.98 Main"
365 Main, the troubled datacenter operator, has finished its investigation into the failure at its San Francisco facility that knocked some of the Internet's most well-known websites, from Craigslist to LiveJournal to Technorati, offline back in July. Ridiculously, the company first tried to blame PG&E for the failure, knowing full well that its clients pay it for reliable power even in a blackout. (Equally ridiculously, I ran a suspect tip that a drunk employee had wreaked havoc in the datacenter.) Now, the company has completely exonerated itself, pinning the blame on a component in its generators. Here's why you still shouldn't believe a word the company says. My analysis, and the company's press release, after the jump.More »
breakdowns
Drunk editor kills the gossip item you care about
I'm a dunce. I was wrong. There, I said it. In running a tip on Tuesday that a drunk employee brought down 365 Main, the San Francisco datacenter which hosts servers running some of the Web's most important sites, I trusted a source I shouldn't have. Here's the story behind my 365 Main post. A warning to readers of sensitive dispositions — I'm about to take you inside the sausage factory, and it's a bloody mess. More »
2:03 PM on Thu Jul 26 2007
By Owen Thomas
11,887 views,
30 comments
breakdowns
365 Main's credibility outage
After killing most of the websites you care about on Tuesday, 365 Main, the troubled datacenter in downtown San Francisco, is back to business. The business of making excuses, that is. Cynthia Harris, the same flack who issued an immaculately timed press release Tuesday morning crowing about how RedEnvelope moved all of its Web operations to 365 Main, only to have them taken down by the outage, is going around telling everyone who will listen that nothing untoward happened. To which any user of Craigslist, Technorati, Six Apart's LiveJournal and TypePad, and AdBrite might respond, rrrrright. Data Center Knowledge has a detailed report. Here's what else I've learned — and why 365 Main's performance remains highly suspicious. More »
breakdowns
A drunk employee kills all of the websites you care about
365 Main, a datacenter on the edge of San Francisco's Financial District, is popular with Soma startups for its proximity and its state-of-the-art facilities. Or it used to be, anyway, until a power outage took down sites including Craigslist, Six Apart's TypePad and LiveJournal blogging sites, local listings site Yelp, and blog search engine Technorati. The cause? You won't believe it. More »
deathwatch
Three Technorati Monsters escape
DO NOT WANT indeed. Troubled blog search engine Technorati has suffered another blow with today's triple resignations of key personnel, a surprising move so quickly after the completion of its long-awaited update. Outgoing CEO Dave Sifry announced the departures of Chief Technologist Tantek Celik (pictured above) and Vice President of Engineering Adam Hertz, but snubbed Product Manager Liz Dunn in the official post and left her to blog about her own resignation. Director of Product Development Dorian Carroll will be promoted to Engineering head, but no replacement for either Celik or Dunn has yet been announced. It remains to be seen if the niche site, bolstered by a $1M influx of capital just six weeks ago, will be able to overcome this talent vacuum and attract high-enough caliber replacements to satisfy investors. Photo (CC) Adactio (And, yes, stolen from Nick's previous post, but quite appropriate, don't you agree?)
internet famous
Who's Really The Most Famous Blogger?
NICK DOUGLAS — Forbes 25 Web Celebs! Technorati 100! Never have so many lists given so little information about who the real top bloggers are. Why is this Jeff Jarvis dude so high up on Technorati's list if you've never actually read his blog? Why does Forbes think Nick Denton is so goddamned important? Here's a simple explanation of what these "top blogger" lists really mean (short answer: less than you think). More »
diggbait
NICK DOUGLAS — A Business 2.0 blogger yesterday blew up Google's tweaked Zeitgeist (which tracks gainers, not top searches). He also deconstructed the PR-friendly "top" lists made by AOL and Yahoo (revealed: AOL's real top searchword is "google"). But what are the top searches on sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, and Craigslist?
More »
Behind the Geist: The Top Search Lists You've Never Seen
NICK DOUGLAS — A Business 2.0 blogger yesterday blew up Google's tweaked Zeitgeist (which tracks gainers, not top searches). He also deconstructed the PR-friendly "top" lists made by AOL and Yahoo (revealed: AOL's real top searchword is "google"). But what are the top searches on sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, and Craigslist?
More »
google
Industry news: Google's News
- Today's top deal: Google will start selling ads for over 50 newspapers. [NY Times]
- MySpace goes to Japan, rejects our suggested name (2 MySpace: Tokyo Drift). [CNet]
- The National Federation of the Blind is suing Target for not making its website accessible to the blind, in a case that decides whether Web sites must be accessible just like physical stores. [NY Times]
- Technorati chief Dave Sifry explains how some of his blog search engine's ranking systems work in his quarterly report on the State of the Blogosphere, [Technorati]
- While publisher Tim O'Reilly maps out the subjects that sell well in his State of the Computer Book Market report. [O'Reilly Radar]
technorati
