CrunchGear 1st Birthday Bash Recap and Photos

We at one of the “other” Crunch blogs celebrated our first birthday last night and we have a plethora of pictures featuring some of the New York tech scene. It wasn’t quite a bunch of tanned, attractive people partying under a fading Palo Alto sunset, but was still a party. Special thanks to all the sponsors and Blast Media for allowing us to give out great prizes — including a robotic Elvis from Wowwee.

Technorati Loses A “Great Leader.” PodTech Also Loses CEO

We’ve all known that blog search engine Technorati and videocasting site PodTech weren’t doing particularly well: that both companies were conducting CEO searches. But today the bloodletting became real.

PodTech CEO John Furrier is out. James McCormick, the COO, steps up to the CEO position. The company also announced that 1938 Media is no longer partnering with them, which is a real loss.

Technorati is a bit more complicated. Dave Sifry, the founder, is no longer CEO. And surprisingly, he is no longer an employee with the Company at all. And no one is replacing him yet.

Sifry said previously that he’d stay with the company: “I expect to resume a more active role in product development.” Today the message was the opposite: “I would go ahead and transition to the board exclusively.”

Teresa Malo, CFO, Dorion Carroll Vice President of Engineering and Derek Gordon, Vice President of Marketing, now jointly run the company.

Sifry’s last blog post as CEO of the company was representative of his entire tenure - vague and cold. Layoffs also occurred today but Sifry didn’t mention them until the end. The blog post sort of went like this:

me….me…me…and oh yeah we layed off eight people.

Sifry also refers to himself as a “great leader” in the fourth paragraph of his post.

How about a different approach? Perhaps a blog post lamenting the layoffs and the disruption in people’s lives would have been in order. And then an ending saying that he takes responsibility for the problems which led to this and will be stepping down, too.

To be fair to Dave, some people who’ve worked with him say he cares a lot about the wellbeing of his employees, and will go above and beyond the norm for them when needed. That side of him doesn’t come out very well in his blog posts. But writing an “I’m leaving” post is certainly difficult to do. I’m not saying I think the post was entirely appropriate, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to some extent.

Update: David Dalka thinks Technorati’s Google SEO tactics may have accelerated Sifry’s departure. And it does look like the Technorati traffic party has ended - Technorati no longer shows up in the search results for the terms I mentioned in that post.

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