Technorati Searching for CEO, Looking for Buyers

Bilal Hameed (3 Views)

It has been confirmed that Technorati is now looking for a new CEO to head the company. Technorati has hired New York based James & Company to carry out the CEO hunt for the company. Techcrunch is reporting that the company is trying to reach out to potential candidates in Silicon Valley and elsewhere for last few weeks now.

Technorati has recently reported healthy stats about the blogosphere and itself. The company employees were told about the Head hunt last week. When people reported about the publishing of stats by Technorati as a tactic to entice potential suitors, CEO Dave Sifry actively denied it, a stand that has become way too common in the industry now.

Technorati is the number 1 blog search engine, with Google Blog Search coming at a distinct second. However Google is now indexing blogs in its main web index quiet regularly, which will likely diminish or eliminate the need for a separate blog search engine. Technorati also faces competition from blogger community like MyBlogLog, and blog aggregators like Techmeme. When it launched four years back it had the option to become a blog search engine, a blog aggregator, or a community platform for bloggers. Technorati decided to have a go at everything, thus losing focus and fumbling with all of it. The new CEO will definitely be tasked to bring focus to Technorati and to either sell it or make it viable for an IPO.

Technorati is backed by Mobius Ventures, August Capital and DFJ, and $7.6 million in Third round of Funding last July. Previous investor August Capital did not participated in this round, which was certainly not a healthy sign.

Update: Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati has disclosed this on his personal blog in a detailed post.

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