David Sifry is out as CEO at the blog search engine Technorati. In
his stead, Teresa Malo, CFO, Dorion Carroll, vice president of
engineering, and Derek Gordon, vice president of Marketing, will
operate as a committee of the office of the president. Sifry will
become chairman of the board.
“It was just a matter of time before I made a transition,” Sifry said
in a blog post to announce his move. Sifry explained that his passion is for the “the sense
of mission” and the “blue sky” innovation inherent in start-ups. He
describes an idea as “a whiff of air over vocal cords.”
Sifry said that Peter Hirschberg will continue as “rainmaker-in-
chief,” leading Technorati’s Conversational Marketing initiative,
corporate development and public relations.
In addition to Sifry’s news, eight other Technorati employees left the office for the last time, too, as a result of lay-offs. “We needed to adjust our expense structure to be more appropriately
aligned with our priorities moving forward,” Sifry said.
Since founding Technorati, Sifry’s shared plenty of ideas. One of his
favorites is that the big winners on the Internet will be those
company’s that understand the “economy of attention.”
“What’s really scarce is people’s time,” Sifry said in 2006.
“When we’re living in a world of 40 million bloggers and everybody
and their sister trying to bombard you with stuff, those technologies
that help me manage time are where real value is.”
But Technorati, Sifry said, isn’t a place for idea-making any longer.
It’s reached its “revenue-stage,” which Sifry said “strikes me with a
bit of sadness.”
Meanwhile, the search for Technorati’s next CEO, which began in the spring, continues.
