David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
Skype-watch.com and ZDNet reports that it’s a DOS type of attack from code posted on a Russian website and not quite the story that Skype PR person Villu Arak is telling. Then again maybe it’s none of those explanations, it could be regarding how Skype interacts with Microsoft Outlook. With each passing hour Skype is losing credibility due to this major outage.
So it begs the question, what if the backbone of the Internet was to fail or be attacked in some manner, how much chaos would ensue?
Techcrunch, Alarm clock and even Jason Calacanis weighed in on David Sifry’s departure. Jason extrapolated into some things that I don’t agree with completely, except with his suggestion that Web 2.0 companies try to make a profit, but I’ll leave that alone for now.
David Sifry today announced that he has stepped down as CEO of Technorati. While the search for a new CEO continues, Teresa Malo (CFO), Dorion Carroll (VP-Engineering), and Derek Gordon (VP-Marketing), will manage the day-to-day operations of the company. Sifry will become “Chairman of Technorati’s board”. What does it ultimately prove? It again clearly demonstrates that Internet experience is not the primary indicator of Internet executive future success.
Hello people. Technorati did a redesign that refocused on mainstream media as I noted in my earlier post the death of blog search. Then Technorati used tags to grow traffic from other search properties. As Arrington asked in early June “When will the Technorati traffic party end?” Apparently Google and others took notice of this and the party ended in July based on Alexa data – I’m surprised Michael did not discuss this at length today in his post actually. This dip exposed the payday to payday advertising dollar budgeting leading to the departure of Sifry and 8 others. It should be noted that this followed the dismissal of several other employees during the July 4th holiday.
Looking at a May 9th Mashable post, it seems that around $1 million was raised when it expanded a round of funding from 10.52 Million to 11.52 Million. It appears that Technorati was spending more cash than it was taking in, even before the traffic decline in July, based on the early July layoffs. The traffic decline in July only made that situation worse.
This leaves Technorati in the unenviable position of needing to generate new advertising dollars at a time when the engineering needs an overhaul it can’t afford. Repairs such as Typepad blog overcounting, flawed link metrics and many other flaws can not occur at this time.
In fact, someone suggested to me in a phone conversation today that perhaps they should shut Technorati off completely now and just sell it’s likely most valuable asset – a 301 redirect of the Technorati domain. The talk of taking Technorati public via IPO will likely be nothing more than that talk in David Sifry’s previous blog posts.(URL REMOVED)
So where is a blog searcher to go now?
Ask – They have recently revamped their offering dramatically and comment search is now combined with post search. It is an offering that is available directly on their front page.
Google – They should move blog search to the front page as I suggested previously and ideally should build and option to show it mixed with news sites.
Other players like Topix, if they were to index the blogosphere fully, could also emerge as an alternative that would properly mix news and blogs together demonstrating that most news is being lifted from blogs by the mainstream media.
Skype is down. I disagree with Skype’s assessment of the problem on their blog. This is because my Skype was not working at all prior to my logging off. In fact I tried logged off thinking relogging in would fix the problem.
Did they release new software into the network without testing it fully? Who knows, but that would be my best guess.
One of Skype’s best features has historically been reliability. If they lose that, people will likely rapidly migrate to other solutions.
There is a big discussion going on this morning regarding Blogger taking down the Facebook Secrets blog that posted the leaked Facebook code.
I’ve got a better and far more important question, why the major inconsistency in what the Blogger team takes down?
On May 11, I wrote a post about a large splog hosted on the Blogger platform. Why hasn’t the Blogger team removed this splog yet? Why aren’t they being proactive when my Feedburner panel clearly shows this as an uncommon use? Why is Blogger apparently only responding to the requests of companies with significant legal teams? When will Blogger protect the interests of all blog content equally?
UPDATE: For another point of view, please visit my recent interview with Barry Schwartz regarding splogs.
I was tagged by Bena Roberts to write 8 Random Things About Me from Paul Ruppert’s original meme. Let’s get to it!
– I love scientific wonders! In Arizona there are many that are well known, like the Grand Canyon or Sedona. But I prefer the unlimited prickly pear lemonade, cactus and scenic beauty of Tuscon, Arizona Highways or my personal overlooked favorite Sunset Crater National Monument! Whale watching in Bar Harbor, Maine is awesome. In Alberta, Drumheller and Lake Louise/Banff are just gorgeous to experience. The west coast surrounding Seattle, northern California and elsewhere is also great, I hope to experience Alaska someday, it’s one of the 14 states I’ve not yet visited.
I love art, most often that is Impressionist art! When I was younger this meant Claude Monet exclusively. Then I saw Camille Pissaro’s exhibition of “The Impressionist in the City”, a tight cluster of paintings all about the city all from the 1890’s. I was blown away by it! Since then I’ve learned about how he was a collaborator among his peers and frequently experimented and innovated a bit from the efforts of each style. He was poor almost all his life, but always pursued what he loved to do! Pissarro is highly inspirational to me and I try to draw from his philosophies in my start up activities. You should check out some of his print galleries here and here. Also, there is currently an exhibition in Milwaukee “Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape” until September 9th, 2007. The exhibition then moves onto to the Brooks Museum in Memphis.
– I’m a fan of the Chicago Bears, Chicago BlackHawks and Chicago Cubs. Yes, two out of three of those is kinda depressing sometimes. Well OK it’s downright sad! Bright spots in there include many memories of Walter Payton, Steve Larmer (you belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame!) and Ryne Sandberg. I miss Chicago Stadium (should have been an untouchable landmark)) but still have Wrigley Field.
– I’ve presently lived in three different North American metropolitan areas: Chicago, Cleveland and New York City. I love traveling and living in different cities as it opens your mind to different ways of thinking about life and approaching the world. I hope to one day live in other cities to gain even more perspectives perhaps even internationally!
– When I lived in New York City, I worked for BlackRock during it’s 80 to 800 person growth phase, this is why I covet being part of highly entrepreneurial environment, whether that is a start up or a highly innovative division of larger company. On BlackRock, I think most people still don’t fully understand how revolutionary this company was from a technical architecture, data redesign, customer service innovation and revenue diversification standpoint. I’ve often said I’d trade my MBA before I’d trade that amazing work experience and I truly mean it. I look forward to being a critical piece of a company like BlackRock again someday!
– I’m fascinated with history, both from a business, innovation and society perspective. There are many great lessons of the past that can be utilized in new situations to make wiser decisions. Peter Drucker is an idol of mine from an innovation and customer listening standpoint. The Chief Marketing Officer of the future will combine many new elements with traditional elements to create first in class experiences.
– I love meteorology! I almost studied full-time when I was in college. I think that weather events will play a critical role in some of the trigger point variables in the coming era of mobile search marketing and mobile advertising and it is one of the many key relevancy factors I’ve identified that can make a big difference. I’m quite excited by this convergence.
– I love to find the best grub around. Whether it’s fine dining like New York’s Union Square Cafe, pizza, ribs, a kick ass burger or things unique to a place like Italian Beef in Chicago or corned beef in Cleveland. You can be sure that if the food is top notch you can likely attract me there to chat!
I’ll tag:
Jason Bartholme
Barry Schwartz – Cartoon Barry
Not tagged? Feel free to join in anyway!
Everything is now packed up and gone from filming Wanted in my local area of Chicago, but it was mostly fun while it lasted.
They did shoot a scene with simulated gunfire and they did a car scene as the guy from the Ultimate Arm was here filming with them. Below are two pictures, one of the sets and the Ultimate Arm filming vehicle, the owner says the fastest he’s ever gone in reverse is 40MPH – quite an achievement when you consider the odd weight on his vehicle!!! Thanks for all the people who commented, emailed and stopped by, it was fun meeting all of you! As you can see I need a new camera, donations and review units highly encouraged!
Those of you who have read this blog for a long time know that I’ve been critical of Google VP of People, Laszlo Bock, due to lack of execution in the past. Things like placing an ad in a magazine and forgetting to launch the microsite or worse ignoring employee referrals that were highly relevant frustrating employees and creating brand damage externally.
Google held an event with several senior executives last night in Chicago. Eric Olson told me about the event, I recently spent a fun day serving as a volunteer website judge with Eric at the annual FBLA-PBL convention – you can read those details here.
I was told by one source that they wish to personalize the recruiting process more and make it less about numbers, keywords and passive candidate recruiting and more about soft skills, knowledge and passion. Time will tell if they succeed in this attempt at change but even stating this shows that they are listening to numerous types of stakeholder feedback and innovating from that. It’s a positive sign. So I have to acknowledge these communicated goals as they suggest that change is a priority.